United States Deputy Assistant Secretary, Bureau of African Affairs, Bisa Williams recently visited Nigeria to dialogue with senior government officials, civil society organizations and other stakeholders on the 2015 elections in Nigeria.
The US envoy said that the elections are very important to the United States and must be transparent, non-violent and serve as a model for democracy for other African countries.
Here are excerpts from her interview with Vanguard:
US position on Nigerian elections?
Nigeria is a very fascinating and dynamic country and there are enormous interests and attractions from the international community, particularly the US, concerning your up coming elections.
Our government has said several times that we are looking forward to the elections being credible, fair, transparent and non-violent.
And that is the key, because Nigeria is such a model for the young democracies in the continent, so it is important to us that the elections are conducted credibly.
United States government and those in the private sector have very great interests in Nigeria, and, during my visit here, I have met with your government, civil society leaders and business people to discuss better ways to progressive elections in your country and also ways that Nigeria can attract new investments, and curb oil theft.
On Corruption
It is our sincere hope that President Jonathan would join other African Presidents who have been invited to the leaders summit that President Obama would be hosting in Washington DC.
If you ask me, I would say that corruption is extremely high in this country; there is no other polite way to say this.
It is extremely unfortunate, because Nigeria as a country has tremendous intelligent people who do not have to be corrupt, because they have all it takes to be successful. Nigerians are resourceful and they are living in abundance of wealth and to acknowledge the fact that there is corruption in Nigeria is disheartening.
Corruption is something that Nigerians ought to want to handle in order to restore the image of the country. They ought to be proud of their country and it is not acceptable for the citizens to say, ‘that is how life is in Nigeria’.
We just had a successful bi-national meeting weeks ago and we sent the number four person from State Department and they talked about the burden of the society and good governance.
We are good friends with Nigeria and as we consider these bothering issues, we would ensure that you get the high level of policy attention coming in from our government.