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Volume 36--Number 35
Pages 1941-1995
 
Week Ending Friday, September 1, 2000
 
Remarks to a Joint Session of the Nigerian National Assembly in Abuja

August 26, 2000

    Thank you very much. Mr. President of the Senate, Mr. Speaker, Mr. 
Deputy President and Deputy Speaker, members of the Assembly, it is a 
great honor for me to be here with members of my Cabinet and Government, 
Members of the United States Congress, mayors of some of our greatest 
cities, and my daughter. And we're glad to be here.
    I must say, this is the first time I have been introduced as 
President in 8 years, speaking to parliamentary bodies all over the 
world, where they played a song before I spoke. [Laughter] I liked it a 
lot. [Laughter] It got us all in a good frame of mind.
    Twenty-two years ago, President Jimmy Carter became the first 
President ever to visit sub-Saharan Africa when he arrived in Nigeria 
saying he had come from a great nation to visit a great nation. More 
than 2 years ago, I came to Africa for the longest visit ever by an 
American President, to build a new partnership with your continent. But 
sadly, in Nigeria, an illegitimate government was killing its people and 
squandering your resources. All most Americans knew about Nigeria then 
was a sign at their local airport warning them not to fly here.

[[Page 1947]]

    A year later Nigeria found a transitional leader who kept his 
promises. Then Nigerians elected a President and a National Assembly and 
entrusted to them--to you the hard work of rebuilding your nation and 
building your democracy.
    Now, once again, Americans and people all around the world will know 
Nigeria for its music and art, for its Nobel Prize winners and its Super 
Falcons, for its commitment to peacekeeping and its leadership in Africa 
and around the world. In other words, once again, people will know 
Nigeria as a great nation.
    You have begun to walk the long road to repair the wrongs and errors 
of the past and to build bridges to a better future. The road is harder 
and the rewards are slower than all hoped it would be when you began. 
But what is most important is that today you are moving forward, not 
backward. And I am here because your fight--your fight for democracy and 
human rights, for equity and economic growth, for peace and tolerance--
your fight is America's fight and the world's fight.
    Indeed, the whole world has a big stake in your success, and not 
simply because of your size or the wealth of your natural resources or 
even your capacity to help lift this entire continent to peace and 
prosperity, but also because so many of the great human dramas of our 
time are being played out on the Nigerian stage.
    For example, can a great country that is home to one in six Africans 
succeed in building a democracy amidst so much diversity and a past of 
so much trouble? Can a developing country blessed with enormous human 
and natural resources thrive in a global economy and lift all its 
people? Can a nation so blessed by the verve and vigor of countless 
traditions and many faiths be enriched by its diversity, not enfeebled 
by it? I believe the answer to all those questions can and must be, yes.
    There are still those around the world who see democracy as a luxury 
that people seek only when times are good. Nigerians have shown us that 
democracy is a necessity, especially when times are hard. The dictators 
of your past hoped the hard times would silence your voices, banish your 
leaders, destroy your spirit. But even in the darkest days, Nigeria's 
people knew they must stand up for freedom, the freedom their founders 
promised.
    Achebe championed it. Sunny Ade sang for it. Journalists like 
Akinwumi Adesokan fought for it. Lawyers like Gani Fawehinmi testified 
for it. Political leaders like Yar'Adua died for it. And most important, 
the people of Nigeria voted for it.
    Now, at last, you have your country back. Nigerians are electing 
their leaders, acting to cut corruption and investigate past abuses, 
shedding light on human rights violations, turning a fearless press into 
a free press. It is a brave beginning.
    But you know better than I how much more must be done. Every nation 
that has struggled to build democracy has found that success depends on 
leaders who believe government exists to serve people, not the other way 
around. President Obasanjo is such a leader. And the struggle to build 
democracy depends also on you, on legislators who will be both a check 
on and a balance to executive authority and be a source--[applause]. You 
know, if I said that to my Congress, they would still be clapping and 
standing. [Laughter]
    And this is important, too; let me finish. [Laughter] In the 
constitutional system, the legislature provides a check and balance to 
the executive, but it must also be a source of creative, responsible 
leadership, for in the end, work must be done and progress must be made.
    Democracy depends upon a political culture that welcomes spirited 
debate without letting politics become a bloodsport. It depends on 
strong institutions, an independent judiciary, a military under firm 
civilian control. It requires the contributions of women and men alike. 
I must say I am very glad to see a number of women in this audience 
today, and also I am glad that Nigerian women have their own Vital 
Voices program, a program that my wife has worked very hard for both in 
Africa and all around the world.
    Of course, in the end, successful political change must begin to 
improve people's daily lives. That is the democracy dividend Nigerians 
have waited for.
    But no one should expect that all the damage done over a generation 
can be undone

[[Page 1948]]

in a year. Real change demands perseverance and patience. It demands 
openness to honorable compromise and cooperation. It demands support on 
a constant basis from the people of Nigeria and from your friends 
abroad. That does not mean being patient with corruption or injustice, 
but to give up hope because change comes slowly would only be to hand a 
victory to those who do not want to change at all.
    Remember something we Americans have learned in over 224 years of 
experience with democracy: It is always and everywhere a work in 
progress. It took my own country almost 90 years and a bitter civil war 
to set every American free. It took another 100 years to give every 
American the basic rights our Constitution promised them from the 
beginning.
    Since the time of our Revolution, our best minds have debated how to 
balance the responsibilities of our National and State Government, what 
the proper balance is between the President and the Congress, what is 
the role of the courts in our national life. And since the very 
beginning, we have worked hard with varying degrees of success and 
occasional, regrettable, sometimes painful failures, to weave the 
diverse threads of our Nation into a coherent, unified tapestry.
    Today, America has people from over 200 racial, ethnic, and 
religious groups. We have school districts in America where, in one 
school district, the parents of the children speak over 100 different 
languages. It is an interesting challenge. But it is one that I am 
convinced is a great opportunity, just as your diversity--your religious 
diversity and your ethnic diversity--is a great opportunity in a global 
society growing ever more intertwined, a great opportunity if we can 
find unity in our common humanity, if we can learn not only to tolerate 
our differences but actually to celebrate our differences. If we can 
believe that how we worship, how we speak, who our parents were, where 
they came from are terribly important, but on this Earth, the most 
important thing is our common humanity, then there can be no stopping 
us.
    Now, no society has ever fully solved this problem. As you struggle 
with it, you think of the Middle East, Northern Ireland, the Balkans, 
the ongoing tragedy of Kashmir, and you realize it is a formidable 
challenge. You also know, of course, that democracy does not answer such 
questions. It simply gives all free people the chance to find the 
answers that work for them.
    I know that decades of misrule and deprivation have made your 
religious and ethnic divisions deeper. Nobody can wave a hand and make 
the problems go away. But that is no reason to let the idea of one 
united Nigeria slip away. After all, after all this time, if we started 
trying to redraw the map of Africa, we would simply be piling new 
grievances on old. Even if we could separate all the people of Africa by 
ethnicity and faith, would we really rid this continent of strife? Think 
of all the things that would be broken up and all the mountains of 
progress that have been built up that would be taken down if that were 
the case.
    Where there is too much deprivation and too little tolerance, 
differences among people will always seem greater and will always be 
like open sores waiting to be turned into arrows of hatred by those who 
will be advantaged by doing so. But I think it is worth noting for the 
entire world that against the background of vast cultural differences, a 
history of repression and ethnic strife, the hopeful fact here today is 
that Nigeria's 250 different ethnic groups have stayed together in one 
nation. You have struggled for democracy together. You have forged 
national institutions together. All your greatest achievements have come 
when you have worked together.
    It is not for me to tell you how to resolve all the issues that I 
follow more closely than you might imagine I do. You're a free people, 
an independent people, and you must resolve them. All I can tell you is 
what I have seen and experienced these last years as President, in the 
United States, and in working with other good people with similar 
aspirations on every continent of the globe. We have to find honorable 
ways to reconcile our differences on common ground.
    The overwhelming fact of modern life everywhere, believe it or not, 
is not the growth of the global economy, not the explosion of 
information technology and the Internet, but the growing interdependence 
these changes

[[Page 1949]]

are bringing. Whether we like it or not, more and more, our fates are 
tied together within nations and beyond national borders, even beyond 
continental borders and across great oceans. Whether we like it or not, 
it is happening. You can think of big examples, like our economic 
interconnections. You can think of anecdotal examples, like the fact 
that we now have a phenomenon in the world known as airport malaria, 
where people get malaria in airports in nations where there has never 
been an single case of malaria because they just pass other people who 
have it from around the world in the airport.
    Whether we like it or not, your destiny is tied to mine, and mine to 
yours, and the future will only make it more so. You can see it in all 
the positive things we can build together and in the common threats we 
face from enemies of a nation-state, from the narcotraffickers, the 
gunrunners, from the terrorists, from those who would develop weapons of 
mass destruction geared to the electronic age, very difficult to detect 
and easy to move.
    Now, we have to decide what we're going to do with the fundamental 
fact of modern life, our interdependence. Is it possible for the Muslims 
and the Christians here to recognize that and find common ground? Can we 
find peace in Jerusalem between the Muslims, the Christians, and the 
Jews? Can we find peace in the Balkans between the Muslims, the Orthodox 
Christians, and the Catholics? Will we ever bring and end to the 
conflict between the Catholics and the Protestants in Northern Ireland--
I mean, finally ever really have it over with completely? Can the Hindus 
and the Muslims learn to live together in Kashmir?
    Isn't it interesting, when I came here, in part to help you move 
into the information revolution more quickly, to spread its benefits to 
more of your people, that all over the world, in this most modern of 
ages, we are bedeviled by humanity's oldest problem: the fear of the 
other, people who are different from us?
    I'm sure there was a time in the deep, distant mists of memory, when 
everyone had to be afraid of people who were not of their tribe, when 
food was scarce and there was no means of communication. But all of us 
still carry around with us the fear of people who are different from us. 
And it is such a short step from being afraid of someone to distrusting 
them, to disliking them, to hating them, to oppressing them, to using 
violence against them. It is a slippery, slippery slope.
    So I say again, the biggest challenge for people in the United 
States, where people still, I'm ashamed to say, lose their lives because 
they are different--not nearly as much as it used to be; it's a rare 
occurrence, but it still tears at our hearts, because we know everyone 
counts, everyone deserves a chance at life, and we all do better when we 
help each other and when we find a way for everyone to follow his or her 
own path through life, guided by their own lights and their own faith.
    So I say to you, I come here with that in mind. The world needs 
Nigeria to succeed. Every great nation must become more than the sum of 
its parts. If we are torn by our differences, then we become less than 
the sum of our parts. Nigeria has within it the seeds of every great 
development going on in the world today, and it has a future worth 
fighting for. You are already a champion of peace, democracy, and 
justice. Last month in Tokyo, your President reminded leaders of the 
Group of Eight very firmly that we are all tenants of the same global 
village.
    He said, and I quote, ``We must deal with the challenges for 
development not as separate entities but in partnership, as members of 
the same global family, with shared interests and responsibilities.'' So 
today I would like to talk just a few minutes about how our two nations, 
with our shared experience of diversity and our common faith in freedom, 
can work as partners to build a better future.
    I believe we have two broad challenges. The first is to work 
together to help Nigeria prepare its economy for success in the 21st 
century and then to make Nigeria the engine of economic growth and 
renewal across the continent. The second is to work together to help 
build the peace that Nigeria and all of Africa so desperately need.
    To build stronger economies, we must confront the diseases that are 
draining the life out of Africa's cities and villages, especially AIDS 
but also TB and malaria. AIDS will reduce life expectancy in Africa by 
20

[[Page 1950]]

years. It is destroying families and wiping out economic gains as fast 
as nations can make them. It is stealing the future of Africa. In the 
long run, the only way to wipe out these killer diseases is to provide 
effective, affordable treatments and vaccines. Just last week I signed 
into law a new $60 million investment in vaccine research and new 
support for AIDS treatment and prevention around the world, including 
Nigeria.
    In the meantime, however, while we wait for the long run, we have to 
face reality. I salute President Obasanjo for his leadership in 
recognizing we can't beat AIDS by denying it; we can't beat AIDS by 
stigmatizing it. Right now, we can only beat AIDS by preventing it, by 
changing behavior and changing attitudes and breaking the silence about 
how the disease is transmitted and how it can be stopped. This is a 
matter of life or death.
    There are nations in Africa--two--that have had a significant 
reduction in the AIDS rate because they have acted aggressively on the 
question of prevention. Tomorrow the President and I will meet with 
Nigerians on the frontline of this fight, and I will congratulate them.
    Building a stronger economy also means helping all children learn. 
In the old economy, a country's economic prospects were limited by its 
place on the map and its natural resources. Location was everything. In 
the new economy, information, education, and motivation are everything.
    When I was coming down here today, Reverend Jackson said to me, 
``Remind everybody that America, to help Nigeria, involves more than the 
Government; it's also Wall Street and Silicon Valley.'' That's what's 
growing our economy, and it can help to grow yours.
    One of the great minds of the information age is a Nigerian-American 
named Philip Emeagwali. He had to leave school because his parents 
couldn't pay the fees. He lived in a refugee camp during your civil war. 
He won a scholarship to university and went on to invent a formula that 
lets computers make 3.1 billion calculations per second. Some people 
call him the Bill Gates of Africa. [Laughter]
    But what I want to say to you is, there is another Philip 
Emeagwali--or hundreds of them, or thousands of them--growing up in 
Nigeria today. I thought about it when I was driving in from the airport 
and then driving around to my appointments, looking into the faces of 
children. You never know what potential is in their mind and in their 
heart, what imagination they have, what they have already thought of and 
dreamed of that may be locked in because they don't have the means to 
take it out. That's really what education is.
    It's our responsibility to make sure all your children have the 
chance to live their dreams so that you don't miss the benefit of their 
contributions and neither does the rest of the world. It's in our 
interest in America to reach out to the 98 percent of the human race 
that has never connected to the Internet, to the 269 of every 270 
Nigerians who still lack a telephone.
    I am glad to announce that the United States will work with Nigeria 
NGO's and universities to set up community resource centers to provide 
Internet access, training, and support to people in all regions of your 
country. I also discussed with the President earlier today a $300 
million initiative we have launched to provide a nutritious meal--a free 
breakfast or a free lunch--for children in school, enough to feed 
another 9 million kids in school that aren't in school today, including 
in Nigeria.
    We know that if we could offer--and I'm going to the other developed 
countries, asking them to contribute, and then we're going to nation by 

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