We invited Obama to visit Nigeria, He will come dont worry - Jonathan

On the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, President Goodluck Jonathan, who addressed the assembly and also met President Barrack Obama during a recent visit to the US, spoke in an interview with Arise Television. Anayo Okolie transcribed the interview…

You met US President Barrack Obama a few days ago, what was it all about?   

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In terms of the number of people, Nigeria is about 65 percent, our contribution towards ECOWAS is about that. Then, when you talk about the rest of Africa, Nigeria is second to South Africa in terms of the economy. But in terms of population, South Africa is just one-third of Nigeria.

So if Nigeria is that important, why hasn’t the president visited yet? Did you ask him to come visit?

I just invited him now to visit Nigeria next year. But when he decided to tour Africa, it was not at the instance of Nigeria. So I cannot decide where Obama should go. He must have used his own parameters to judge.

And of course, sometimes people feel that Nigeria is a country that is doing very well but at the same time, South Africa, in terms of the economy, is ahead of Nigeria now and Obama visited South Africa. But I don’t want to discuss why Obama did not visit Nigeria. We’ve invited him to come to Nigeria next year.

Did he say yes? Cuts in...
Normally when you invite a president they will not say yes or no, but they allow the diplomatic department to sort it out. In some cases he could say yes.

We explained why we wanted him to come. Nigeria as a modern state would be 100 years old in 2014, since the amalgamation of the North and South took place in January 1, 1914. So by next year, what we know as Nigeria will be 100 years old. So, we have a lot of programmes coming up, like historical programmes, cultural, political programmes and so on.

So we believe that he could key in, especially, looking at his Power Africa Programme initiative. And we have many programmes about young people, women. We can create a platform that he could use to advance his programmes.

It depends on how we package the programme. Presidents are very busy people. They won’t just travel for the sake of traveling. But I believe that by the time we communicate details to him, he’ll decide whether he will come or not.