Nigeria’s Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo on Thursday met with visiting US Secretary of State, Antony Bliken, at the State House, Abuja, where they spoke on issues of common interest to both countries.
It was also an occasion for Bliken and Nigeria’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Geofrey Onyeama, to adopt their joint statement on the signing of the $2.17billion Development Objective Assistant Agreement, “which will play a role in supporting a healthier, more educated, prosperous, stable and resilient Nigeria.”
In his remarks, Vice President Osinbajo said that the response to the COVID-19 pandemic has shown the importance of cooperation between both countries and the need to work together to tackle global challenges.
“This is equally a conventional way of showing how interconnected the whole world is,” he stated.
He added that “there is no real solution without everyone being protected from this pandemic and the possibility of others.”
Expressing Nigeria’s gratitude to the US government for the delivery of the Super Tucano aircraft to Nigeria, Osinbajo said the country was “looking forward to the helicopters.”
He said that a lot of the infrastructure and intelligence support from the US would be critical on the security issues in the North-East of Nigeria and the Sahel Region.
“Of course, the challenge seems to increase especially in the Sahel today, most of them in the Lake Chad region with the ISWAP and all of that.”
Osinbajo said that greater collaboration was necessary because the challenge of terrorism especially of the kind seen with ISWAP, Boko Haram and ISIS is that it could take the kind of dimensions that may be much more dangerous than it seems.
Climate change
On climate change, Prof. Osinbajo said “collaboration is key” and “absolutely important.”
“Some of the concerns we had, President Muhammadu Buhari had mentioned at COP26, especially around the whole issue of gas as a zero transition fuel.”
He pointed out the fact that some countries, especially developing countries, are fossil fuel rich and that no industrialized nation was able to develop their economy using renewable energy alone.
According to him, calling on developing countries to rely on renewable energy for industrialization will not be fair to them.
“And I think that we should really look at how there is public investment programme especially for gas because it remains the lather through which we can increase access to electricity, which is a problem in developing nations and again it is closely tied to poverty.”
Strong ties
Blinken said that the American government would welcome working together together with Nigeria in every possible way to address the challenges citizens of both countries face.
“We all feel very strongly when it comes to Covid-19 and we are grateful for the work we have been able to do together on that.
“I think looking to the future, developing capacity for manufacturing vaccines in Africa is going to be critical, especially in dealing with the next pandemic. Unfortunately there is going to be one.
“We know that there is much we can do to build our economies back, even stronger after the pandemic and much of that goes to the right kinds of investment in infrastructure, in real economies, in making sure that the investments we are making together are really raised to the top for our people in terms of the standards we bring to these projects.”
He said that his country appreciated the work Nigeria has done on climate change, including at the COP26 and with regard to dealing with emission.
Increased market access
Nigeria’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Onyeama called on Blinken to look into the challenges Nigerians face in getting visas to travel to the United States.
Onyeama also spoke on the need for increased market access for our agriculture products in the framework of African Growth and Opportunities Act mechanism to help to promote Africa access to US market for African countries.
Emmanuel Ukoh
