US to help recovery efforts

Nigeria deserves US help in fighting crime, improving domestic socio-political and economic conditions as well as making democracy a hallmark of its body politic, a senior US official told senators at the weekend.

“Nigeria needs and deserves our assistance as it undertakes these difficult tasks,” Thomas Pickering, undersecretary for political affairs, told the US lawmakers on Thursday.

Pickering, a former US ambassador to Nigeria, was giving the Senate Foreign Relations Committee an assessment of measures taken by Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, since he took office in May, to fight crime and corruption, end human rights abuses, restore political legitimacy and ensure economic reforms.

Pickering, whose briefing came in the wake of Obasanjo’s recent visit to the US, said over the next 18 months US engagement with Nigeria would consisting of consolidating civilian rule after years of military rule, helping it to reform the military and building partnerships in other areas of mutual concern, from the environment to transnational crime.

He said the United States was now inaugurating a Joint Economic Partnership Committee with Nigeria as a vehicle for permanent dialogue on economic reform, investment and trade. Nigeria supplies nearly 8 percent of crude oil to the US.