14 May 2001
(Page 2 of 2)
Can you just sum up for us where you hope to take the country economically, how you want to move forward, what your priorities are in the economic field?
Economically we are moving the country to be a dynamic and self-reliant nation - market economy and private-sector led - but where all Nigerians can feel that they are all participants in the Nigerian economy, without any hindrance or undue favor to anybody inside or outside. And we want development; we want our friends from outside Nigeria to join hands with us in getting the economy of Nigeria as buoyant as possible. We want to become a semi-industrialized country by the end of this decade.
Thank you, Mr. President.
Following the conversation with AllAfrica.com, President Obasanjo answered questions from a group of reporters.
Can you describe your discussion with President Bush?
My discussion with President Bush went very well. We are meeting for the first time, and we got on as if we had been friends all our life. We took issues that are of concern bilaterally to us, and we discussed them very cordially. The fact that President Bush made me part of the luncheon [with UN Secretary General Kofi Anan] of the global trust fund for HIV/ AIDS is an indication of the way he believes that our relationship should go, and I thank him for that. But we looked at issues of development, issues of conflicts in Africa, issues of debt, and we agree on where we should go.
On the issue of Nigerian democracy, it continues to struggle to get off the ground. Did President Bush make any commitment to you in terms of helping Nigeria to boost its democracy?
No, it's a new one on me that Nigerian democracy is struggling to get off the ground. [laughs] I am learning that from you; now that you have told me, I will have to go back to President Bush and ask him to come and help me get Nigerian democracy off the ground.
I think that that type of question - to put it mildly, there's nowhere in the world that democracy can be regarded as perfect. Everywhere in the world, democracy is a process, and it keeps going. It's not an event. And Nigerian democracy - the last that one would call an event! - we have started. We are not struggling; we are a maturing democracy. We are doing everything necessary to sustain it, so not getting off the ground is not the way to look at Nigerian democracy. Nigerian democracy has gotten off the ground.
There are some democracies [that have a longer history than Nigeria's] that have probably not achieved what Nigerian democracy achieved in the short period of its life. But, yes, I have always maintained that the "democracy dividend", which means getting resources to deal with essential quality of life enhancement in our own society, will definitely make the democracy firmer. Not only America, but all our development partners, need to contribute to that. Democracy is essentially our own. I only ask people to join hands with us.
Did [President Bush] say he would help you?
Yes, well, help in what sense? You see, this idea of helping, I do not really like it, the idea that you come from Africa, you are going to America to seek help. Look, there's no country that doesn't need help, and, with all due respect, just as we need America, America needs us.
We supply eight percent of oil imported by this country, and one of the things that President Bush will want us to do is to increase that, because {the United States has] a problem of energy. Now if we are doing that, would you regard that as we are helping America?
I don't. I regard it as we are doing what we should be doing. We are trading. We are increasing our trading, which we should be doing if we want to let the economy of the world expand. Now, that word "help": to me, it's a little bit unpalatable. If you say, well look, do you see things that you can agree to do together? Yes, of course. We see things that we can agree to do together.
For instance, we have spent money and lost lives in Liberia and in Sierra Leone. Now, did we do that for ourselves or for West Africa alone? Of course we do it for the world, and do we then feel that we are "helping"? We do it because the world needs peace, and we have made a contribution, and we will make a contribution any time again to let the world have peace. I would not go to Sierra Leone today and say that we are helping you. Sierra Leone might not even like it. But we are there, and we are there because we believe in good neighborliness. We believe that there must be peace in Sierra Leone. We believe that peace in Sierra Leone argues well for peace in West Africa, in Africa and in the world.
You mentioned Nigeria's role in the West African sub region. [Is] Nigeria, having done all that it did for Liberia and Sierra Leone, now calling for international help to assist in the peacekeeping? Did you discuss that with Pres Bush?
Not international help as such. We want the world to take note, so if, for instance, we ask for debt remission or debt reduction, I believe that such [peacekeeping] activities, such services, such sacrifices that we have made in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and that we will make in other places, should be taken in consideration. That's all.
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