Page 237 - Leadership Lessons of the White House Fellows

THE LESSONS

supplies to the Biafrans. The Nigerians agreed with the procedures Dewey
and Ferguson proposed, but the Biafran leader, Governor Ojukwu, refused
to accept it even though the plan clearly was designed to benefit his people.
Ferguson gave up and returned to the United States, while a dejected
Dewey departed for one of the bases used as a stop for the relief supplies.
He collapsed on the beach, heartbroken for the people of Biafra.
The next day, Dewey was summoned to meet with a Catholic bishop
on the island. He did not want to see the bishop, fearing that the man
would side with the Biafran leader and waste everyone’s time criticizing the
American efforts to provide aid. Unfortunately, that was exactly what
happened. The bishop reeled off a litany of complaints about how the
United States was not doing enough to help the Biafrans and how everyone
always sided with Nigeria. In despair, Dewey confronted the bishop with
the truth: Ojukwu was the one holding up the agreement while the innocent
people of Biafra paid the ultimate price for his stubbornness. Dewey
explained the entire Cross River proposal to the bishop, whose attitude
gradually began to soften. The conversation closed with the bishop
promising that when Ojukwu came to confession later that week, he would
have a talk with him and get him to change his mind.
“I remember thinking, ‘So much for that. That will be the day when
the bishop raises this issue with Ojukwu.’ So I went back to Washington,”
Dewey said. “But incredibly, I received a call a couple of days later from
the Biafran office in New York saying that General Ojukwu had accepted
the Cross River proposal. That was quite an eye-opener for me because we
had all these plans and formulas for how to persuade Ojukwu to accept the
proposal, and it ended up taking something totally different to reach him.”
At the conclusion of Dewey’s Fellowship, he returned to the military,
where he completed a second tour in Vietnam. At the end of that tour, he
was recruited to be director of the White House Fellows program during the
Nixon administration. He later was appointed Deputy Assistant Secretary
of State for Refugee Programs by President Ronald Reagan. Dewey says that
the greatest leadership lesson he learned from his White House Fellowship
was the necessity of being prepared and becoming an expert. His title as a
White House Fellow meant virtually nothing as he designed and tried to
execute the Cross River plan in Nigeria. What counted was his expertise
and his attitude. “I learned that you don’t go into a job without preparation
and the right mindset. You have to be able to put your mind to developing

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