NIGERIA should use the opportunity offered by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's visit to build a strategic relationship.Making the call, Country Director, Oxfam Nigeria, Dr. Chichi Aniagolu-Okoye, said the country could work out enhanced international trade relations as a strategy for closer ties.In an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria yesterday, in Abuja, the country director, said that Nigeria should discard its currentdonor dependent status during her visit.'America has a lot to offer but this time around it must not be Nigeria coming cap in hand as it does all the time begging, instead it must be a strategic relationship,' she said.According to her, though Nigeria has a long relationship with America, with a long bilateral relations developed between the two and a bi-national commission, which was dictating the relationship between Nigeria and America.Aniagolu-Okoye stressed the need to create an environment of mutual trade and cooperation that allowed Nigerian goods easy access to America, saying that this would help Nigeria's private sector to improve its goods to be more competitive in the international market.The country director pointed out that the issue of security was becoming the major global focus therefore Nigeria should see it as one of the areas of priority.She said the security issue was not a matter of America giving Nigeria a helping hand but it is about America recognising that curtailing the problem in Nigeria would also mean that it does not eventually spill over to America and elsewhere.'This has become so imperative because the world is getting smaller and what affects one country affects another, when the Al-Oaedain the Middle-East started, we never thought this will happen to us, and today in Nigeria, we are having almost the same problem,' she saidAniagolu-Okoye argued that the issue of security could not be isolated without adequate consideration to poverty alleviation.She said the poverty alleviation must not be in form of hand out or increasing aid assistant to Nigeria, but creating a respectful and mutual relationship that allowed Nigeria the full freedom to participate in the world trade.To her, even though there was technically democratic government in Nigeria, yet democracy has not taken root in the country, therefore U.S. needed to focus on it.She said focusing on that had become essential because Nigeria has adopted the American democratic system thereby giving America a say in assisting Nigeria to build its democratic institutions.Aniagolu-Okoye said Nigerian politicians should no longer get away with ruling its people badly, therefore America with its might should extract promises of good governance from the government.The Country Director, Action Aid, Dr.Hussain Abdul, noted that the visit of Clinton was just another American diplomatic visit to Nigeria.He said there was no doubt that U.S. is more powerful, influential and economically buoyant than Nigeria and naturally there must be a relationship but it has to be symbiotic relationship.Abdul, therefore, warned that Nigeria must not present a dependency position to the visiting Secretary of State.'You depend on me and I depend on you, Nigeria has a lot to offertherefore, we should actually interface , and work out what can Nigeria gain for American throughout the diplomatic relationship and what can American gain from Nigerian,' he added.
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