SOURCE: http://montreal.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20091018/british_diplomats_091018/20091018/?hub=MontrealHome

Excerpt -

Until 2006, ambassadors retiring from their post or moving country traditionally sent a valedictory dispatch to London, offering their candid personal assessment of the country in which they had served.

(In 1969), David Hunt -- then high commissioner to Nigeria -- said the West African country's leaders had "a maddening habit of always choosing the course of action which will do the maximum damage to their own interests."

"Africans as a whole are not only not averse to cutting off their nose to spite their face; they regard such an operation as a triumph of cosmetic surgery," Hunt claimed in his letter.

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I suppose this is where die-hard NLanders use a single, self-descriptive, and all-encompassing word - GBAM!

. . .40 years later, and this is observation still true - How sad

Whao the statement "Africans as a whole are not only not averse to cutting off their nose to spite their face; they regard such an operation as a triumph of cosmetic surgery," is very ugly but was a candid picture of what was happening in the country at that time, This was the middle of the Nigerian Civil War,
, Imagine the gory scene of the massacares in the North and the 30 month pogrom such an event is very distasteful to a person with some civility,
, In my head I can picture Nigerian leaders (i.e. gowon) happy to inform their british Lords that the war (the self inflicting destruction) is going on well for the country, federal side, I guess good news, To the ambassador there is no winner the only loser is Nigeria itself.