Hope Rises on Nigeria’s Potential After Jonathan’s White House, UN Trips

A GROUNDSWELL of global goodwill and rising acclaim for Nigeria and its re-elected President Goodluck Jonathan was on display last week at the United Nations, New York and Washington DC, as world leaders expressed the hope that Nigeria would actualise its potentials.

For instance, former US President Bill Clinton said, in New York, that Jonathan may turn out to be the leader that would bring Nigeria to its “full potential,” just as there are now active talks of a President Obama visit to Nigeria before the end of his first term in office.

After meeting with the US President late Wednesday, diplomatic sources in Washington DC disclosed that the issue of a visit to Abuja by the US President is now merely a question of timing.

Although the idea of an Obama visit to Nigeria has been discussed in recent times, diplomats say, the outcome of the April elections has made the visit imperative and could be accomplished later in the year or the beginning of next year.

It would be recalled that a senior White House official had, while Obama was on Christmas vacation in Hawaii last year, reportedly stated that the US President intended to make another visit to Africa before the end of his first term in office.

Sources say Nigeria will be included on that African tour, which would be the second stop in Africa by Obama after his famous first visit to Ghana in 2009.

Back in New York, the same day he met with Obama, President Jonathan spoke for a fourth time at the UN on Thursday afternoon at a side event organised by the UNAIDS themed Countdown to Zero — an initiative to reduce mother-to-child HIV infections to zero. Before that, Jonathan had spoken on Tuesday at the Security Council and also spoke twice on Wednesday — once at a UN press conference and later at the HIV/AIDS high-level summit of the General Assembly.

It was at the Thursday afternoon event that former US President Bill Clinton congratulated Jonathan on his election and declared that the Nigerian president has a “studied outreach to bridge the divide that has kept Nigeria from reaching its full potential.”

Adding that his wife, Hillary Clinton, who happens to be the US Secretary of State, says good things about President Jonathan, including the fact that “your hats are always cool,” to the applause of the audience that included top UN and US officials like the Secretary General of the UN, Ban Ki-moon. .

In reference to his speech at the event, where he restated Nigeria’s commitment to the HIV/AIDS fight and announced that he would lead an ECOWAS initiative to come up with new sources of funding to continue the onslaught against the scourge, Clinton thanked Jonathan fir his efforts. “I thank you very much for what you have done,” he said.

Earlier in the week, Nigeria and its President had received commendation from the Secretary-General, who also noted Jonathan’s personal commitment to the HIV/AIDS fight.

At the beginning of the week when he addressed a press conference at the UN even before Jonathan’s arrival, Ban said: “I appreciate his (President Jonathan’s) strong commitment to see the end of the HIV/AIDS epidemic.”

Ban himself had recently completed a visit to Nigeria of which he said on return at the UN that he was very impressed by the many efforts of the federal government of Nigeria to advance the MDGs in the country, especially citing the new health bill passed by the National Assembly.

A White House statement issued later after the Obama-Jonathan meeting in Washington DC was silent on the issue of a US presidential visit, and sources explain that an official announcement of such a visit would come only when the timing has been concluded between both US and Nigerian diplomats.

However, the release observed that the US President “personally congratulated President Jonathan on the success of Nigeria’s recent elections, which deepened the foundation for future democratic contests.”

The statement also added that both “leaders discussed how the Jonathan administration can build on this momentum by investing in Nigeria’s energy supply, agricultural productivity, democratic institutions, and security sector.”

Besides, President Obama “called on President Jonathan to make fighting corruption a national priority and a critical step in ensuring the necessary conditions for sustained economic growth and lasting prosperity,” while thanking him “for his leadership both regionally and within the United Nations Security Council on pressing issues such as Sudan, Libya, and Cote D’Ivoire.”

The White House statement concluded, “both leaders agreed to continue to work together to promote peace and security.”

-Guardian

wp_posts