U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Nigeria yesterday as part of a three-nation African trip that began in Kenya and will end in Senegal. Before leaving home, Blinken on Wednesday said that Washington had removed Nigeria from its list of countries with religious freedom concerns.
That day he made an annual announcement of the countries on the list, naming Myanmar, China, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan as countries of particular concern. He also placed Algeria, Comoros, Cuba and Nicaragua on a watch list for religious freedom, and designated armed groups, including Islamic State and several of its affiliates, as entities of concern. But Nigeria, which was added to the list for the first time in 2020, was not redesignated.
The timing of Nigeria’s omission and Blinken’s couldn’t have been coincidental. It obviously was intended to ease frayed nerves in the Nigerian government over America’s acceptance of a panel’s finding that soldiers “massacred” protesters on October 20, last year, in Lagos. In Abuja, Blinken is expected to discuss the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, revitalizing democracies, and security issues.
He will meet with President Muhamadu Buhari and other top government officials, including the vice president, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo and foreign affairs minister, Geoffrey Onyeama. They will discuss cooperation on global health security, expanding energy access and economic growth, and revitalizing democracy, according to a U.S. State Department release last week.
Blinken will give a talk on U.S.-Africa policy, emphasizing the value of democracy. This year alone, the continent has witnessed successful military coups in Chad, Guinea and Sudan, threatening decades of progress toward democracy.
Expectations on the Blinken visit are understandably high for the simple reason that the trajectory of President Joe Biden’s Africa policy hasn’t been clear since taking office January this year. Yes, one of the first things he did was signing an executive order lifting travel bans imposed by his predecessor, Donald Trump, on Muslim countries including Nigeria – a move that was widely praised. But after that nothing. The expectation is that things will move faster and clearer on that front after Blinken’s visit.
Meanwhile, we say, Blinken, barka da zuwa.
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