FORMER Ivory Coast foreign minister Amara Essy, who was elected the new secretary-general of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), was on Thursday accorded a hero’s welcome upon his return from Lusaka. Thousands of excited crowds ringed the road from Abidjan airport to the administrative quarter of Plateau, where the president’s office is located. They shouted: “Welcome back the heroes of Lusaka,” as a 30-car motorcade carrying Essy and President Laurent Gbagbo passed by. Essy was elected to the top job at an OAU summit in the Zambian capital Lusaka. His job will be to steer the pan-African body through its crucial transformation into an EU-style African Union. – AFP