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Some of the rhetoric at Khartoum justified Bongo's criticism. Restating the obvious, Liberia's President William Tolbert declared that the continent "should struggle against racism and neocolonialism." Sekou Toure celebrated his return to the summit by pummeling the West with a scathing sermon. Africa's problem, typified by the French-Belgian operation in Zaïre, was Western-style imperialism, which Toure equated with "Satan, as described in the holy Koran, the Bible and the New Testament. It is not just bad, it is evil characterized by keen cruelty, an evil capable of the worst."
It was left to Nigeria's Lieut. General Olusegun Obasanjo to provide the summit with a statesmanlike sense of purpose. Wearing a flowing pink-flowered Yoruban robe and, on his head, a red and gold fula, the tall, husky Obasanjo took the rostrum to deliver an address that was at once forceful, balanced and conciliatory. As leader of the most populous African nation—and one with political clout, since it supplies 25% of U.S. petroleum imports—Obasanjo had no qualms about condemning "without reservation" intervention from any source. The Shaba operation, he agreed, was "a most naked and unashamed attempt to determine what Africa's true collective interests should be. Paratroop drops in the 20th century are no more acceptable to us than the gunboats of the last century were to our ancestors." Moreover, said the general, "convening conferences in Europe and America to decide the fate of Africa raises too many ugly specters that would be best forgotten."
Obasanjo acknowledged Western concern over Communist infiltration in Africa. But, he advised, "no African nation is about to embrace Communism wholesale any more than we are willing to embrace capitalism. To the extent that any African country can be considered by the West to have 'gone Communist,' it was as a direct result of the failure of Western policies. In every case where Cuba's intervention was established, they intervened as a consequence of the failure of Western policies."
Obasanjo was not content merely to warn the onetime colonial rulers of Africa against neocolonialism. He also blamed Africans in part for their own problems: "We African leaders must realize that we cannot be asking outside powers to leave us alone while in most cases it is our own actions which provide them with the excuse to interfere in our affairs. We can no longer hide behind real or imagined foreign machinations for our own failings."