Nigeria: Remarks At the U.S.-Nigeria Binational Commission

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Washington, DC — SECRETARY KERRY: Well, good afternoon and hello, and welcome to the Treaty Room of the State Department. We don't have a treaty to sign today, but we're delighted to be here. I'm really pleased to be joined by my colleague Geoffrey Onyeama, and very happy to welcome his distinguished delegation here today. The importance of today, which is a full day's meeting of the U.S.-Nigeria Binational Commission, is really underscored by the quality of the participants on both sides and the breadth of the discussion that we are having in the course of the day. Representatives from my government include leaders from the State Department, USAID, the Defense Department, Commerce Department, and several other key agencies. And Jim Entwistle, of course, our outstanding ambassador to Nigeria, is also here, as is the Nigerian Charge d'Affaires Hakeem Balogun, and welcome. And we're happy to have such broad representation at this important dialogue.

Let me just say a word personally about this because I had the occasion to travel twice to Nigeria last year. And I personally became invested in the enormous possibilities of this enormous country which is vital to all of Africa, to all of our interests in so many different ways. And so this morning our two teams focused appropriately on the security issues. In the afternoon, we're going to review issues related to economic development and to governance. And in just a few minutes, we're going to have a working lunch, which will cover probably a little bit of a mix of both. But our delegations have already covered a lot of ground, and they have a lot of ground yet to cover in the rest of today. And I think it's fair to say that we both attach a very high value to this conversation, and we also attach a high value to simply the people-to-people component of this.

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