Washington, D.C. — Over the weekend, Charles Cobb, Jr. and Reed Kramer interviewed Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo at Blair House, the Presidential Guest House across the street from the White House in Washington, D.C. The Nigerian head of state had just completed three long days of back-to-back meetings with Bush administration and congressional leaders, the heads of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, and an array of business and industry representatives. En route to the United States the President visited Angola, DR Congo and Rwanda, where he discussed the progress of peace efforts.
Here are excerpts from the conversation.
You have just come from Rwanda, where you said that you would push President Bush for more support for the efforts to settle the Congo conflict. Mr. Bush and his people have also expressed a great deal of interest in Nigeria's role in securing and extending stability, both regionally and continentally in Africa. Have you been talking with administration officials about an expanded role for Nigeria?
The word I would have used would not be 'push'. It would have been that I would brief him and then see how we could move forward together and that's exactly what I have done. I realize that the US, as the leading nation of the world today, has, or must have, interest in what happens virtually everywhere in the world - must have global interest and global concern. As a result, I did make sure that I have the up-to-date situation at my fingertips in all the conflict areas of Africa, so that I could discuss these situations with President Bush, which we did.
President Bush, of course, expressed appreciation on behalf of the USA, and on behalf of the world, for the role Nigeria has been playing in peacekeeping and peacemaking and conflict resolution in West Africa and indeed in Africa. We also looked at what we need to move things forward in Democratic Republic of the Congo, where I got first hand reports that the Lusaka Agreement is generally on course. We've been slow - as even the people on the ground or even the main participants admitted - but it has not been derailed. That's important. One of the things I noticed when I was in Kinshasa/Kigali was that there is a great desire to get on with it and get peace, enduring peace and security in the sub-region.
Did the question of debt come up? Nigeria has expressed concern about this issue for some time now.
Debt, the issue of debt, must come up, because the issue of debt is not the issue of debt for the sake of the issue of debt. It is tied up to a number of other things. If we have a revenue of 12 billion dollars a year, and we have to be forced to spend 30 -40% of that to service debt - some of which is doubtful in origin - it affects all the other things on which democracy hangs, particularly the ability to give our people what I call the "democracy dividend", which is basically the enhancement of their quality of life. And if people cannot have improvement of their quality of life, sooner or later they will be questioning the basis of what you call "democracy". Yes, they embrace democracy because of the very bad experience they have had with an oppressive dictatorship, but also they embrace democracy because they believe that it has more for them than just its intrinsic value.
What is the position of your government on this issue: debt forgiveness, debt cancellation, or what?
Well, some people don't like debt forgiveness. I don't know why they don't like the word "forgiveness", because as a Christian I pray to God, "Forgive me my sins as I forgive those who trespass against me." Some say rather than "forgiveness" they would like "remission". Okay. What I'm asking for is reduction in the quantum of debt, so whether you call it debt cancellation, debt remission, debt relief, debt reduction, whatever you call it, just reduce the burden of debt that I am carrying. Simple.
Do you feel like you've been able to progress in that direction - a democracy dividend and international understanding and support - in the time that you've been in office?
Yes, at the political level, almost everywhere that I have been, including President Bush, the understanding and the sympathy is there. Even at the level of the multi-lateral financial institutions like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, the understanding is there. Of course, they say, well we cannot have wholesale debt forgiveness; we can have, if you like, partial debt forgiveness. They call it debt remission, but whatever it is, if you say I owe you 100 and you manage to reduce it to 50, then the burden I am carrying becomes 50 % of the burden.
Then it's more manageable. Then the 50% that has been reduced can be used by me in providing medical care, health care for my people, education for my people, potable water for my people. [We can begin to address] all the social needs, to improve the life expectancy - which is abysmally low, and now has even been reduced with malaria coming on, with HIV/AIDS coming on and, TB. At one time, some years back, I was told that TB had been eradicated; it now has come back with a vengeance, with HIV/AIDS and all the other infectious diseases that take their toll on our people. We must be able to have means of treating, preventing, and curing.
There are a number of questions that pertain to Nigerians internally that we do not have time to get into, but, most immediately, the states in northern section of the country increasingly seem to be adopting Shar'ia law. How does a person like yourself, in charge of a federal government, manage a nation in which a chunk of it seems to be governed by a different set of laws?
Well, Shar'ia law is not a thing new in Nigeria. At the very rural and local level, we have always been governed by what is called customary courts - in the north, what they call area courts. these area courts, in the area of personal law, marriage, inheritance, divorce, they have been dispensing Shar'ia law. That has always been there. And even in our constitution, we have a Shar'ia Court of Appeal that can be empaneled out of the Court of Appeal. We must have people who are learned in Shar'ia law among the judges in the Court of Appeal, so that if there's need, if an appeal comes from Shar'ia, they can empanel a Shar'ia Court of Appeal to hear the case. So this has always been there, and I have always maintained that what I call genuine Islamic Shar'ia has always been part of Islam; it has always been part of the way of life among Muslims in Nigeria, and it's nothing new.
It is what I call political Shar'ia that is new and that will come and go, because if you want to use Shar'ia to achieve political ends it will not hold. It may stick for a while, but it will not hold. The genuine Shar'ia, Islamic Shar'ia, is part of the religion and is part of the way of life of a Muslim and part of the way of life of Nigerians. We have existed in that way from the time that Islamic religion arrived in our land.
Why this new political Shar'ia?
Well, you know, people normally want to use anything they can use for political domination - religion, language, education - people use anything. But unless you use what is right, whatever else you use doesn't last.
Oil plays a major role in Nigeria's economy. In the Niger Delta region there is a report [a recently declassified CIA study] about the environmental effects of the oil and gas industry. The report equated the oil spills in that region to about a dozen Exxon-Valdez oil spills over a two or three-year period. What kinds of steps can a country like Nigeria, which clearly needs the oil industry, take to -
Well it's a step that we all have to take together, all of us who have a stake in the oil industry: the federal government, the state government, the local community and the oil companies. We must ensure that the pollution aspect, the environmental aspect, of the oil industry is taken care of. We have now a Ministry of Environment, which devotes itself to nothing other than improvement of the environment, watching the environment, monitoring what goes on. One section of that ministry does nothing other than looking after the pollution: how do we deal with pollution? How do we remove it? How do we improve the oil producing areas of our country? As I said, it's an all hands on deck exercise - the community, the local government., the state government, the federal government., and the oil producing companies. We all have to work together, barring sabotage, when an oil spill does come, doing what needs to be done and making sure that where compensation has to be paid, it is paid; where people have to be protected, they are protected.
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.
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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.
