[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book II)]
[August 26, 2000]
[Pages 1705-1711]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks to a Joint Session of the Nigerian National Assembly in Abuja
August 26, 2000

    Thank you very much. Mr. President of the Senate, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Deputy 
President and Deputy Speaker, members of the Assembly, it is a great honor for me 
to be here with members of my Cabinet and Government, Members of the 
United States Congress, mayors of some of our greatest cities, and my 
daughter. And we're glad to be here.
    I must say, this is the first time I have been introduced as 
President in 8 years speaking to parliamentary bodies all over the 
world, where they played a song before I spoke. [Laughter] I liked it a 
lot. [Laughter] It got us all in a good frame of mind.
    Twenty-two years ago President Jimmy Carter became the first 
President ever to visit sub-Saharan Africa when he arrived in Nigeria 
saying he had come from a great nation to visit a great nation. More 
than 2 years ago, I came to Africa for the longest visit ever by an 
American President, to build a new partnership with your continent. But 
sadly, in Nigeria, an illegitimate government was killing its people and 
squandering your resources. All most Americans knew about Nigeria then 
was a sign at their local airport warning them not to fly here.
    A year later Nigeria found a transitional leader who kept his 
promises. Then Nigerians elected a President and a National Assembly and entrusted to them--to 
you the hard work of rebuilding your nation and building your democracy.
    Now, once again, Americans and people all around the world will know 
Nigeria for its music and art, for its Nobel Prize winners and its Super 
Falcons, for its commitment to peacekeeping and its leadership in Africa 
and around the world. In other words, once again, people will know 
Nigeria as a great nation.
    You have begun to walk the long road to repair the wrongs and errors 
of the past and to build bridges to a better future. The road is harder 
and the rewards are slower than all hoped it would be when you began. 
But what is most important is that today you are moving forward, not 
backward. And I am here because your fight--your fight for democracy and 
human rights, for equity and economic growth, for peace and tolerance--
your fight is America's fight and the world's fight.
    Indeed, the whole world has a big stake in your success, and not 
simply because of your

[[Page 1706]]

size or the wealth of your natural resources or even your capacity to 
help lift this entire continent to peace and prosperity, but also 
because so many of the great human dramas of our time are being played 
out on the Nigerian stage.
    For example, can a great country that is home to one in six Africans 
succeed in building a democracy amidst so much diversity and a past of 
so much trouble? Can a developing country blessed with enormous human 
and natural resources thrive in a global economy and lift all its 
people? Can a nation so blessed by the verve and vigor of countless 
traditions and many faiths be enriched by its diversity, not enfeebled 
by it? I believe the answer to all those questions can and must be, yes.
    There are still those around the world who see democracy as a luxury 
that people seek only when times are good. Nigerians have shown us that 
democracy is a necessity, especially when times are hard. The dictators 
of your past hoped the hard times would silence your voices, banish your 
leaders, destroy your spirit. But even in the darkest days, Nigeria's 
people knew they must stand up for freedom, the freedom their founders 
promised.
    Achebe championed it. Sunny Ade sang for it. Journalists like 
Akinwumi Adesokan fought for it. Lawyers like Gani Fawehinmi testified 
for it. Political leaders like Yar'Adua died for it. And most important, 
the people of Nigeria voted for it.
    Now, at last, you have your country back. Nigerians are electing 
their leaders, acting to cut corruption and investigate past abuses, 
shedding light on human rights violations, turning a fearless press into 
a free press. It is a brave beginning.
    But you know better than I how much more must be done. Every nation 
that has struggled to build democracy has found that success depends on 
leaders who believe government exists to serve people, not the other way 
around. President Obasanjo is such a 
leader. And the struggle to build democracy depends also on you, on 
legislators who will be both a check on and a balance to executive 
authority and be a source--[applause]. You know, if I said that to my 
Congress, they would still be clapping and standing. [Laughter]
    And this is important, too; let me finish. [Laughter] In the 
constitutional system, the legislature provides a check and balance to 
the executive, but it must also be a source of creative, responsible 
leadership, for in the end, work must be done and progress must be made.
    Democracy depends upon a political culture that welcomes spirited 
debate without letting politics become a bloodsport. It depends on 
strong institutions, an independent judiciary, a military under firm 
civilian control. It requires the contributions of women and men alike. 
I must say I am very glad to see a number of women in this audience 
today, and also I am glad that Nigerian women have their own Vital 
Voices program, a program that my wife has worked very hard for both in Africa and all around 
the world.
    Of course, in the end, successful political change must begin to 
improve people's daily lives. That is the democracy dividend Nigerians 
have waited for.
    But no one should expect that all the damage done over a generation 
can be undone in a year. Real change demands perseverance and patience. 
It demands openness to honorable compromise and cooperation. It demands 
support on a constant basis from the people of Nigeria and from your 
friends abroad. That does not mean being patient with corruption or 
injustice, but to give up hope because change comes slowly would only be 
to hand a victory to those who do not want to change at all.
    Remember something we Americans have learned in over 224 years of 
experience with democracy: It is always and everywhere a work in 
progress. It took my own country almost 90 years and a bitter civil war 
to set every American free. It took another 100 years to give every 
American the basic rights our Constitution promised them from the 
beginning.
    Since the time of our Revolution, our best minds have debated how to 
balance the responsibilities of our National and State Government, what 
the proper balance is between the President and the Congress, what is 
the role of the courts in our national life. And since the very 
beginning, we have worked hard with varying degrees of success and 
occasional, regrettable, sometimes painful failures, to weave the 
diverse threads of our Nation into a coherent, unified tapestry.
    Today, America has people from over 200 racial, ethnic, and 
religious groups. We have school districts in America where, in one 
school district, the parents of the children speak over 100 different 
languages. It is an interesting challenge. But it is one that I am 
convinced is

[[Page 1707]]

a great opportunity, just as your diversity--your religious diversity 
and your ethnic diversity--is a great opportunity in a global society 
growing ever more intertwined, a great opportunity if we can find unity 
in our common humanity, if we can learn not only to tolerate our 
differences but actually to celebrate our differences. If we can believe 
that how we worship, how we speak, who our parents were, where they came 
from are terribly important, but on this Earth, the most important thing 
is our common humanity, then there can be no stopping us.
    Now, no society has ever fully solved this problem. As you struggle 
with it, you think of the Middle East, Northern Ireland, the Balkans, 
the ongoing tragedy of Kashmir, and you realize it is a formidable 
challenge. You also know, of course, that democracy does not answer such 
questions. It simply gives all free people the chance to find the 
answers that work for them.
    I know that decades of misrule and deprivation have made your 
religious and ethnic divisions deeper. Nobody can wave a hand and make 
the problems go away. But that is no reason to let the idea of one 
united Nigeria slip away. After all, after all this time, if we started 
trying to redraw the map of Africa, we would simply be piling new 
grievances on old. Even if we could separate all the people of Africa by 
ethnicity and faith, would we really rid this continent of strife? Think 
of all the things that would be broken up and all the mountains of 
progress that have been built up that would be taken down if that were 
the case.
    Where there is too much deprivation and too little tolerance, 
differences among people will always seem greater and will always be 
like open sores waiting to be turned into arrows of hatred by those who 
will be advantaged by doing so. But I think it is worth noting for the 
entire world that against the background of vast cultural differences, a 
history of repression and ethnic strife, the hopeful fact here today is 
that Nigeria's 250 different ethnic groups have stayed together in one 
nation. You have struggled for democracy together. You have forged 
national institutions together. All your greatest achievements have come 
when you have worked together.
    It is not for me to tell you how to resolve all the issues that I 
follow more closely than you might imagine I do. You're a free people, 
an independent people, and you must resolve them. All I can tell you is 
what I have seen and experienced these last years as President, in the 
United States, and in working with other good people with similar 
aspirations on every continent of the globe. We have to find honorable 
ways to reconcile our differences on common ground.
    The overwhelming fact of modern life everywhere, believe it or not, 
is not the growth of the global economy, not the explosion of 
information technology and the Internet, but the growing interdependence 
these changes are bringing. Whether we like it or not, more and more, 
our fates are tied together within nations and beyond national borders, 
even beyond continental borders and across great oceans. Whether we like 
it or not, it is happening. You can think of big examples, like our 
economic interconnections. You can think of anecdotal examples, like the 
fact that we now have a phenomenon in the world known as airport 
malaria, where people get malaria in airports in nations where there has 
never been an single case of malaria because they just pass other people 
who have it from around the world in the airport.
    Whether we like it or not, your destiny is tied to mine, and mine to 
yours, and the future will only make it more so. You can see it in all 
the positive things we can build together and in the common threats we 
face from enemies of a nation-state, from the narcotraffickers, the 
gunrunners, from the terrorists, from those who would develop weapons of 
mass destruction geared to the electronic age, very difficult to detect 
and easy to move.
    Now, we have to decide what we're going to do with the fundamental 
fact of modern life, our interdependence. Is it possible for the Muslims 
and the Christians here to recognize that and find common ground? Can we 
find peace in Jerusalem between the Muslims, the Christians, and the 
Jews? Can we find peace in the Balkans between the Muslims, the Orthodox 
Christians, and the Catholics? Will we ever bring and end to the 
conflict between the Catholics and the Protestants in Northern Ireland--
I mean, finally ever really have it over with completely? Can the Hindus 
and the Muslims learn to live together in Kashmir?
    Isn't it interesting, when I came here, in part to help you move 
into the information revolution more quickly, to spread its benefits to 
more of your people, that all over the world, in this

[[Page 1708]]

most modern of ages, we are bedeviled by humanity's oldest problem: the 
fear of the other, people who are different from us?
    I'm sure there was a time in the deep, distant mists of memory, when 
everyone had to be afraid of people who were not of their tribe, when 
food was scarce and there was no means of communication. But all of us 
still carry around with us the fear of people who are different from us. 
And it is such a short step from being afraid of someone to distrusting 
them, to disliking them, to hating them, to oppressing them, to using 
violence against them. It is a slippery, slippery slope.
    So I say again, the biggest challenge for people in the United 
States, where people still, I'm ashamed to say, lose their lives because 
they are different--not nearly as much as it used to be; it's a rare 
occurrence, but it still tears at our hearts, because we know everyone 
counts, everyone deserves a chance at life, and we all do better when we 
help each other and when we find a way for everyone to follow his or her 
own path through life, guided by their own lights and their own faith.
    So I say to you, I come here with that in mind. The world needs 
Nigeria to succeed. Every great nation must become more than the sum of 
its parts. If we are torn by our differences, then we become less than 
the sum of our parts. Nigeria has within it the seeds of every great 
development going on in the world today, and it has a future worth 
fighting for. You are already a champion of peace, democracy, and 
justice. Last month in Tokyo, your President reminded leaders of the Group of Eight very firmly 
that we are all tenants of the same global village.
    He said, and I quote, ``We must deal with the challenges for 
development not as separate entities but in partnership, as members of 
the same global family, with shared interests and responsibilities.'' So 
today I would like to talk just a few minutes about how our two nations, 
with our shared experience of diversity and our common faith in freedom, 
can work as partners to build a better future.
    I believe we have two broad challenges. The first is to work 
together to help Nigeria prepare its economy for success in the 21st 
century and then to make Nigeria the engine of economic growth and 
renewal across the continent. The second is to work together to help 
build the peace that Nigeria and all of Africa so desperately need.
    To build stronger economies, we must confront the diseases that are 
draining the life out of Africa's cities and villages, especially AIDS 
but also TB and malaria. AIDS will reduce life expectancy in Africa by 
20 years. It is destroying families and wiping out economic gains as 
fast as nations can make them. It is stealing the future of Africa. In 
the long run, the only way to wipe out these killer diseases is to 
provide effective, affordable treatments and vaccines. Just last week I 
signed into law a new $60 million investment in vaccine research and new 
support for AIDS treatment and prevention around the world, including 
Nigeria.
    In the meantime, however, while we wait for the long run, we have to 
face reality. I salute President Obasanjo 
for his leadership in recognizing we can't beat AIDS by denying it; we 
can't beat AIDS by stigmatizing it. Right now, we can only beat AIDS by 
preventing it, by changing behavior and changing attitudes and breaking 
the silence about how the disease is transmitted and how it can be 
stopped. This is a matter of life or death.
    There are nations in Africa--two--that have had a significant 
reduction in the AIDS rate because they have acted aggressively on the 
question of prevention. Tomorrow the President and I will meet with Nigerians on the frontline of 
this fight, and I will congratulate them.
    Building a stronger economy also means helping all children learn. 
In the old economy, a country's economic prospects were limited by its 
place on the map and its natural resources. Location was everything. In 
the new economy, information, education, and motivation are everything.
    When I was coming down here today, Reverend Jackson said to me, ``Remind everybody that America, to help 
Nigeria, involves more than the Government; it's also Wall Street and 
Silicon Valley.'' That's what's growing our economy, and it can help to 
grow yours.
    One of the great minds of the information age is a Nigerian-American 
named Philip Emeagwali. He had to leave school because his parents 
couldn't pay the fees. He lived in a refugee camp during your civil war. 
He won a scholarship to university and went on to invent a formula that 
lets computers make 3.1 billion calculations per second. Some people 
call him the Bill Gates of Africa. [Laughter]

[[Page 1709]]

    But what I want to say to you is, there is another Philip 
Emeagwali--or hundreds of them, or thousands of them--growing up in 
Nigeria today. I thought about it when I was driving in from the airport 
and then driving around to my appointments, looking into the faces of 
children. You never know what potential is in their mind and in their 
heart, what imagination they have, what they have already thought of and 
dreamed of that may be locked in because they don't have the means to 
take it out. That's really what education is.
    It's our responsibility to make sure all your children have the 
chance to live their dreams so that you don't miss the benefit of their 
contributions and neither does the rest of the world. It's in our 
interest in America to reach out to the 98 percent of the human race 
that has never connected to the Internet, to the 269 of every 270 
Nigerians who still lack a telephone.
    I am glad to announce that the United States will work with Nigeria 
NGO's and universities to set up community resource centers to provide 
Internet access, training, and support to people in all regions of your 
country. I also discussed with the President earlier today a $300 million initiative we have 
launched to provide a nutritious meal--a free breakfast or a free 
lunch--for children in school, enough to feed another 9 million kids in 
school that aren't in school today, including in Nigeria.
    We know that if we could offer--and I'm going to the other developed 
countries, asking them to contribute, and then we're going to nation by 
nation, working with governmental groups, working with farm groups--we 
don't want to upset any local farm economies; we understand their 
challenges here, but we know if we could guarantee every child in every 
developing nation one nutritious meal a day, we could dramatically 
increase school enrollment among boys and especially among girls. We 
don't have a child to waste. I hope we can do this in Nigeria, and I 
hope you will work with us to get the job done.
    I have also asked the Peace Corps to reestablish its partnership 
with Nigeria as soon as possible to help with education, health, and 
information technology.
    Building a strong economy also means creating strong institutions 
and, above all, the rule of law. Your Nobel laureate, Wole Soyinka, has 
written that he imagines a day when Nigeria is, quote, ``an unstoppable 
nation, one whose citizens anywhere in the world would be revered simply 
by the very possession of a Nigerian passport.''
    I don't need to tell you that the actions of a small group of 
Nigerians took away that possibility, took away the pride of carrying 
the passport, stealing the opportunity from every decent and honest 
citizen of this country. But we will bring the pride and prosperity back 
by cracking down together on crime, corruption, fraud, and drugs.
    Our FBI is again working with Nigeria to fight international and 
financial crime. Our law enforcement agencies are working to say to 
narcotraffickers, there should be no safe havens in Nigeria. As we do 
these things, we will be able to say loud and clear to investors all 
over the world, ``Come to Nigeria. This is a place of untapped 
opportunity because it is a place of unlimited potential.''
    This year I signed into law our Africa trade bill, and many of its 
champions are here with me from our Congress. It will help us to seize 
that opportunity, creating good jobs and wealth on both sides of the 
Atlantic. The challenge is to make sure any foreign involvement in your 
economy promotes equitable development, lifting people and communities 
that have given much for Nigeria's economic progress but so far have 
gained too little from it.
    Neither the people nor the private sector want a future in which 
investors exist in fortified islands surrounded by seas of misery. 
Democracy gives us a chance to avoid that future. Of course, I'm 
thinking especially of the Niger Delta. I hope government and business 
will forge a partnership with local people to bring real, lasting social 
progress, a clean environment, and economic opportunity.
    We face, of course, another obstacle to Nigeria's economic 
development, the burden of debt that past governments left on your 
shoulders. The United States has taken the lead in rescheduling 
Nigeria's debt within the Paris Club, and I believe we should do more. 
Nigeria shouldn't have to choose between paying interest on debt and 
meeting basic human needs, especially in education and health. We are 
prepared to support a substantial reduction of Nigeria's debts on a 
multilateral basis, as long as your economic and financial reforms 
continue to make progress and you ensure that the benefits of debt 
reduction go to the people.

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    Now, let me say, as we do our part to support your economic growth 
and economic growth throughout Africa, we must also work together and 
build on African efforts to end the conflicts that are bleeding hope 
from too many places. If there's one thing I would want the American 
people to learn from my trip here it is the true, extraordinary extent 
of Nigeria's leadership for peace in West Africa and around the world.
    I hope our Members of Congress who are here today will tell this to 
their colleagues back home. Over the past decade, with all of its 
problems, Nigeria has spent $10 billion and sacrificed hundreds of its 
soldiers lives for peace in West Africa. Nigeria was the first nation, 
with South Africa, to condemn the recent coup in Cote d'Ivoire. And 
Nigerian soldiers and diplomats, including General Abubakar, are trying to restart the peace process in Congo. 
In these ways, you are building the record of a moral superpower.
    That's a long way to come in just a couple of years, and I urge you 
to stay with it. But I know, I know from the murmurs in this chamber and 
from the murmurs I heard in the congressional chamber when I said the 
United States must go to Bosnia, the United States must go to Kosovo, 
the United States must train an Africa crisis response initiative, the 
United States must come here and help you train to deal with the 
challenges of Sierra Leone--I know that many of you have often felt the 
burden of your peacekeeping was heavier than the benefit. I know you 
have felt that.
    But there's no one else in West Africa with the size, the standing, 
the strength of military forces to do it. If you don't do it, who will 
do it? But you should not have to do it alone. That's what's been wrong 
with what's happened in the last several years. You have too heavy a 
burden. Because of your size, everyone expects you to lead and to do so 
with enormous sensitivity to the needs of others. But despite your size, 
you cannot lead alone, and you shouldn't have to pay the enormous price. 
I am determined, if you're willing to lead, to get you the international 
support you need and deserve to meet those responsibilities.
    This week the first of five Nigerian peacekeeping battalions began 
working with American military trainers and receiving American 
equipment. With battalions from Ghana and other African nations, they 
will receive almost $60 million in support to be a commanding force for 
peace in Sierra Leone and an integral part of Nigeria's democratization. 
We think the first battalions will be ready to deploy with U.N. forces 
early next year. We expect them to make an enormous difference in 
replacing the reign of terror with the rule of law. As they do, all of 
West Africa will benefit from the promise of peace and stability and the 
prospect of closer military and economic cooperation, and Nigeria will 
take another step toward building a 21st century army that is strong and 
strongly committed to democracy.
    Let me say to the military leaders who are here with us today that 
the world honors your choice to take the army out of politics and make 
it a pillar of a democratic state.
    Last year President Obasanjo came to 
Washington and reminded us that peace is indivisible. I have worked to 
build a new relationship between America and Africa because our futures 
are indivisible. It matters to us whether you become an engine of growth 
and opportunity or a place of unrelieved despair. It matters whether we 
push back the forces of crime, corruption, and disease together or leave 
them to divide and conquer us. It matters whether we reach out with 
Africans to build peace or leave millions of God's children to suffer 
alone.
    Our common future depends on whether Africa's 739 million people 
gain the chance to live their dreams, and Nigeria is a pivot point on 
which all Africa's future turns.
    Ten years ago a young Nigerian named Ben Okri published a novel, 
``The Famished Road,'' that captured imaginations all over the world. He 
wrote of a spirit child who defies his elders and chooses to be born 
into the turmoil and struggle of human life. The time and place were 
modern Nigeria, but the questions the novel poses speak to all of us in 
a language that is as universal as the human spirit.
    In a time of change and uncertainty, Okri asks us, ``Who can dream a 
good road and then live to travel on it?'' Nigerians, as much as any 
nation on Earth, have dreamed this road. Since Anthony Enahoro stood up 
in a colonial Parliament and demanded your independence in 1953, 
Nigerians have dreamed this road in music and art and literature and 
political struggle, and in your contributions to prosperity and 
progress, among the immigrants to my country and so many others.
    Now, at the dawn of a new century, the road is open at home to all 
citizens of Nigeria. You

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have the chance to build a new Nigeria. We have the chance to build a 
lasting network of ties between Africa and the United States. I know it 
will not be easy to walk the road, but you have already endured such 
stiff challenges. You have beaten such long odds to get this far. And 
after all, the road of freedom is the only road worth taking.
    I hope that, as President, I have helped a little bit to take us a 
few steps down that road together. I am certain that America will walk 
with you in the years to come. And I hope you will remember, if nothing 
else, what I said about our interdependence. Yes, you need us today 
because at this fleeting moment in history, we are the world's richest 
country. But over the long run of life and over the long run of a 
nation's life and over the long run of civilization on this planet, the 
rich and the poor often change places. What endures is our common 
humanity.
    If you can find it amidst all your differences and we can find it 
amidst all ours, and then we can reach out across the ocean, across the 
cultures, across the different histories with a common future for all of 
our children, freedom's road will prevail.
    Thank you, and God bless you.

Note: The President spoke at 3:15 p.m. in the House of Representatives 
Chamber at the National Assembly Building. In his remarks, he referred 
to Senate President Pius Anyim, Speaker of the House Ghali Na'Abba, 
Deputy Senate President Ibrahim Mantu, Deputy Speaker of the House 
Chibudum Nwuche, and President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria; novelist 
Chinua Achebe; musician King Sunny Ade; U.S. Special Envoy to Africa 
Rev. Jesse Jackson; and former Nigerian military leader Gen. Abdulsalami 
Abubakar.