US Has So Much At Stake In Nigeria- Jeffrey Hawkins

Nice to be here. And can I say Eid Mubarak to all of your Muslim viewers as well? Thank you, thank you.

Of course. You know, we have a really wide and deep relationship with Nigeria, and this US-Nigeria Binational Commission is really a reflection of the importance of the relationship. There's just a few countries on the continent with which we have agreements like that. And so the idea was to provide our leadership, the Nigerian leadership, the American leadership, with a formal forum to discuss some of the key issues. Among those were five primary areas, and we have working groups in each of those areas. The first is regional security. We also focus on transparency, democracy, and governance. We focus on energy and investment. We focus on agriculture and food security. And we also focus on the Niger Delta. I think those are all issues that we care deeply about, and I think the Nigerian government cares deeply about, and the Nigerian people care deeply about. So any progress made in these areas of focus, of course, we have lots of engagement in all sorts of areas, and the Binational Commission is really an opportunity for us to talk things through and to hash things out at a senior level. There are concrete things that come out of this. For example, I think a lot of our work with the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission on corruption issues was a result of discussions there. But that's not the primary focus of this. The idea isn't to come up with agreements or communiqués; the idea is really to talk through the issues because the relationship has lots of things going on and lots of achievements that are being handled every day. But we needed a place where we could talk things through. So the metric is not how many agreements were signed; it's much more how much dialogue was there between the two parties.

Well, I mean, it happens on different levels. And of course, we focus on things like assistance. One component of our large assistance to Nigeria is agricultural assistance, getting agricultural markets to products. We have the AGOA system that allows Nigerian products duty-free access to the US market. There's also a policy element to this. In other words, it's important for governments, the Nigerian government and the American government, to get the right policies in place to promote agriculture. And this is a unique opportunity for our experts to talk about these issues and also for our senior leaders to do as well.

Well, I mean, we have so much at stake in this country. Nigeria is our second largest investment destination on the African continent. Nigeria is a regional leader. There are 1.5 million Nigerians living in the United States. There are tens of thousands of Americans living here. There are educational ties, there are cultural ties. Nigeria's success as a democracy, as a regional leader, as an economic powerhouse, is very much tied to our success, or vice versa, on the continent. If Nigeria does well, American investors, Nigerian Americans, American and Nigerian students do well. If Nigeria doesn't do well, that bodes poorly for all of us.

Well, there's a lot of ways that we come at that. And one of them is the frank dialogue that we have in the Binational Commission on these issues. And as I mentioned, we do have a working group that's devoted primarily to issues of transparency, democracy, and governance, which are all related. We have some real focused assistance that works in that area. I mentioned the EFCC, and we do work closely with them on corruption issues. And if you pull the lens out a little wider, we also of course work with Nigerian law enforcement generally. So there's a great deal of cooperation with the police, the security services, with the NDLEA on drug issues, all of which is tied into the issue of corruption. If you've got good law enforcement going on, that's going to get at the root of that. I think we do about $3 million a year in assistance on the law enforcement area.

If you bring the lens out a little wider, so much of what we do impacts that. And whether it's our assistance in the health area or in education and all the rest, we are working to ensure that our assistance money is implemented in the best way possible. So whether it's working on setting up good elections and making sure that government is responsible to the Nigerian people, whether it's working with civil society groups that monitor how the Nigerian government spends its budgets or how state governments spend their budgets, whether it's working with observers for elections, all of those things tie into the corruption piece. All of them are ways of helping Nigeria, and more importantly, helping Nigeria and Nigerian civil society in particular play the important watchdog role that they do. And the last thing I would just like to highlight as well is the important role that you all play, that the media plays, in exposing corruption. As we were sitting in the waiting room to come in here, we were discussing this video that you all released of the police officer extorting a bribe from a Nigerian person. That role, the media role, is so huge. And that again is another area where the United States government is very interested in assisting our Nigerian partners.

Well, I think the general consensus was that the 2000 elections represented the will of the Nigerian people. That was the consensus among international observers, and most of the Nigerians that I've spoken to generally feel that that was a decent election. The United States government put a tremendous amount of effort into helping the Nigerian government ensure that was a good election, particularly working with INEC. I think between the UK and the United States, we put something like $30 million into that election. So the preparations for that were very important, and the thing went well. Moving forward, we're going to be looking at the 2015 elections as well very closely. It's a crucial moment for Nigeria. There are a lot of challenges: there are security challenges, there are challenges of corruption, the political scene has shifted quite a lot in the last few months. And it is absolutely vital for Nigerian interest, for our interest, and above all for the Nigerian people, that this thing work well. And the United States will do everything that it can, both on the assistance side, on the part of quiet diplomacy behind the scenes, and above all working with civil society, to ensure that these elections are good elections that reflect the will of the people.