    [Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 36, Number 35 (Monday, September 4, 2000)]
    [Pages 1946-1953]
    [Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

    <R04>
    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.

    [[Page 1947]]

        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 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

    [[Page 1948]]

    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 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

    [[Page 1949]]

    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 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

    [[Page 1950]]

    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]
        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.

    [[Page 1951]]

        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.
        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.

    [[Page 1952]]

    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 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
    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

    [[Page 1953]]

    Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria; novelist Chinua Achebe; musician King
    Sunny Ade; Rev. Jesse Jackson, U.S. Special Envoy to Africa; and former
    Nigerian military leader Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar.