2023: We are committed to supporting free, fair, credible and peaceful elections, says U.S Consul General, Stevens

The new American Consul General in Lagos, Will Stevens in this exclusive interview with JOSEPH ONYEKWERE (Deputy Editor) shares his experience about Nigeria, its democratic system and the U.S mission activities in Nigeria.

So now how do you feel being in Nigeria?
Yeah, I’m so excited to be here. I actually begged to come to this job. It’s something that I really, really wanted to do since the first time I visited Nigeria for work back in 2012/13. I thought, this place is a place with tremendous opportunity and having worked on the continent a little bit before, I kept running into Nigerians who were just doing fascinating things and solving really tough problems with ingenuity and kind of entrepreneurial spirit that I think is a real hallmark of Nigerians. So I love being here. I have all my positive biases reconfirmed. Obviously, there are challenges in every society, but it’s a really exciting time to be here and I’m proud to be part of it.

Obviously you’ve been in other places in Africa. Which areas have you been?
I just came from South Africa. So I spent the last three years in South Africa where I worked through multiple variations of COVID-19, Omicron and others before that. But also, I’ve worked on African affairs in Washington. So, I was our spokesperson for African affairs, the last time President Barack Obama hosted the heads of states and I worked on Nigeria. I came back after serving in Moscow and worked in Africa, in the Africa Bureau on countering violent extremism and did some travels around the continent.

In America or other Western countries, there’s this perception about Africa, particularly Nigeria, especially for those who have not even had the opportunity to visit. They believe that the country is corrupt and filled with people who are uncivilised. Now you are here. What is your reality?
Yeah, I actually spent my entire career working on trying to correct people’s misperceptions about the United States. Now, I find myself in this unique space where it actually happens all the time. People just don’t understand the importance of Nigeria. So, every time I talk to U.S. government officials and U.S. businesses, I give them sort of what I call my elevator speech, which is: ‘let me just lay out a few facts for you about why this matters. If Lagos State were a country, it would have an economy larger than Kenya’s, twice the same size as the Ivory Coast and Ghana combined. And then they all kind of go, Oh, wow, that’s incredible!’

And then you talk about the fact that this country will be the third largest country in the world by 2050 and that one in four Africans are Nigerian. That Nigerian diaspora makes up the most successful diaspora in the United States when it comes to education level and income levels. These types of connections and ties are just so important that we must get it right, and that we understand what’s happening here. That’s why we focused a lot on the creative sectors, because I think it allows Nigerians to tell their story themselves. You can speak to audiences in the United States through music, through film, through technology and the solutions that you’re finding. And there’s voracious appetite for it, clearly. Have you seen the new Wakanda Forever movie? Half of the soundtrack is from Nigeria, and it opened globally here in Lagos. It’s absolutely astounding.

Nigeria has a very young democracy and we’re already in transition process. Our general election will be next year and it’s very critical to our survival. What message do you have for Nigerians with regards to this particular election?
We are really committed to supporting free, fair and credible elections in Nigeria and peaceful elections next February. And I want to be super clear. We do not support any particular candidates or parties in this election or for that matter, in any other elections. Our interest is in supporting credible elections where people feel like when they vote, their vote will be counted. So we’ve backed that up with action. We’ve supported it through technical assistance to organisations like INEC, with some of their ICT and their technology solutions. We’ve provided support to civil society organisations to increase voter awareness of the new processes to the tune of almost $45 million through USAID and other organisations.

But the other aspect of our interest in supporting credible elections is that they are conducted peacefully. And that means we look to all Nigerians to reject the use of violence and inflammatory rhetoric before, during and after the elections. Individuals who seek to undermine the democratic process, including through violence, may be found ineligible for visas to the United States. We’ve done this before, impose visa restrictions on officials and others in the past, and we’ll do it again if we have to. One thing I have learned in my time here is that there are lots of accusations that swirl around about things. And sometimes, it’s good to nail down the facts. But we definitely care deeply because this country matters a lot. It is the largest democracy on the continent.

And it’s a young democracy, as you said. But democracies are constantly refreshing themselves and improving. I think that’s one of the great things about democracy. We have flaws and we talk about them. We have free and independent media that highlight those flaws and areas that need to be improved. It’s how we combat corruption in the United States and in Nigeria. It’s how we improve how our governments operate by holding ourselves accountable and standing up against those who might wish to intimidate.

What are your areas of priorities in your work here?
I work here in Lagos, which means I cover the 17 southern states of Nigeria together with one of the most experienced ambassadors we have in in the world like Marybeth Leonard, who is our ambassador in Abuja. And it’s wonderful to have her as a mentor and leader because she really teaches me a lot.

But covering the southern states, we’re focused on a lot of economic issues because many of the economic powerhouses are based here in Lagos. We cover the oil and gas industry. We also work on maritime issues.

And I’m very focused on trade and investment because they provide the foundation for the relationship we need to have. And I believe that Nigerians look to the U.S. as a key partner of choice. I think that we need to do everything we can to maintain that position of partnership. So, it’s my job to work across the US government and ensure that US companies are seeing that opportunity, that they understand how to work in this environment and that we’re connecting interested Nigerians with partners in the US.

What’s the philosophy behind the recent African leadership summit, which you organised in the US?
The summit is a chance for leaders from across the continent to rub minds. President Joe Biden invited 49 leaders from the continent to come and meet and engage with one another and with senior leadership in the US government and the US private sector to talk about the future of the partnership. And I use that word a lot. And let me explain what I mean by it, because I think it gets thrown around a lot. President Biden has been crystal clear about this, which is that the problems that the world faces are too big for the US to solve alone.

We have to do it together. We can’t talk about African problems for African solutions or African solutions to African problems anymore. We need to be talking about African solutions to global problems. And this summit last week is about bringing African leaders together to talk about the big challenges that we face together. And how the U.S. can partner with Africa to bring African solutions to the forefront, talk about climate change, talk about the pandemic, and how we respond to the global health security. Talk about food security. Talk about Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine and how that’s impacting some of the basic fundamental norms of the international community and how Africa has stood together with the international community to condemn that. So it’s about coming together and talking about those partnerships, what we can do together and what we need to be doing differently, learning from one another and being honest with each other.

At the summit, there were several kinds of civil society youth programmes. There’s actually a roundtable on the creative industries in Africa. A variety of organisations hosted things outside of the official forum. There was the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) ministerial talk about trade issues. AGOA allows African exporters to export duty free to the United States. There is the Africa Business Forum, where you had major CEOs and leaders of big American companies coming together with leaders of Nigerian and African businesses and government officials to talk about trade and investment. And then there was an all day conversation about peace and security and what we call the leaders summit, plus a state dinner at the White House with President Biden and Vice President Harris.

There are some African leaders who were not invited for this?
That’s right. We invited all the nations that are in good standing with the African Union. So there are four African nations that aren’t in good standing with the African Union who were not invited, plus one country we don’t have diplomatic relations with. They are Mali, Burkina Faso, Eritrea and Guinea Bissau.

Tell us about the consular and your youth-focused engagements.
Engagements in a country where the average age is 19 require some thinking. You have to think about how you can form a foundation of partnership with the United States so that people 20 years from now will continue to look to the US as a partner and someone that’s trusted. So, we have focused on engaging with the youths and that crosses a variety of programmes. We have American centres and American corners around the country where we do programming for youths, things like coding skills, STEM programming, robotics, working with local governments and local schools to bring some of the things that I think make America great and our innovations to folks around the country.

We also have a programme focused on encouraging people to study. In the US last year, we saw a 12 per cent increase in the number of Nigerians studying in the United States, making Nigeria one of the top 10 countries in the world, sending students to the US. So, we help provide kind of advice on what kind of schools to apply to where scholarships might be available, how to go through the process, because it’s very different from the process here, how to prepare, working with parents, what are the costs likely to be, and so, it’s about education and connection.

Then the programme I’m most proud of is the Mandela Washington Fellows. You’ve probably heard of Yali Mandela Washington Fellows, which was launched by President Obama at the last leaders summit in 2014. And I was able to play a role in setting up that programme back then, where you bring young leaders, people in their mid twenties and late twenties to the US for a six week’s intensive seminar on a variety of different topics. So they kind of choose their topics, ranging from media, civil society, health, and then they work with other African leaders from across the continent and American leaders in these areas and really hone their skills, network with one another and then come back and find solutions. It’s an amazing and inspiring programme.

I just think of these people who are doing absolutely courageous things. We hosted a group of Mandela Washington fellows, and I met this young lady, a doctor who is from, I think Kaduna or Kano, who’s using social media to talk about women’s health issues. And she’s faced threats to her life because of the things she talks about, such as sexual reproductive health issues that they don’t want her talking about for some reason or another, and just the courage to get out and do that kind of thing; and how she was able to learn from other people who are doing it on the continent.

What is your interest in promoting Nigeria’s creative community?
I think it’s an area for a tremendous opportunity. It’s already, kind of poses a lot of connections. Last year, we supported hip TV as they held the Headies in Atlanta, which is the sort of premier event for West African music. And so many of those musicians are so tightly interwoven into the fabric of American music and content creators on YouTube and Instagram, sending their content to the US and inspiring American youths to learn more about Africa. It’s about empowering Nigerians to tell their story in film and in music. And you see, it’s leading to big investments and lots of money coming in.

You know, Netflix announced that they had spent something like $50 million on Nigerian content in the last five years for their streaming service. And that’s just Netflix! It doesn’t include Disney and Amazon Prime and Paramount and Apple tv who are also looking at content creators. There’s now competition, more money coming into the ecosystem and more connections such that American artists are collaborating with Nigerian artists. It’s really cool. That helps to solve the reputation problem a little bit. When you’re sitting at home in America watching Netflix and a Nollywood show comes on and you’re learning about life in Lagos, it bursts those sort of preconceived notions you have and teaches you a little bit about the world, which I think is wonderful.

I think engaging and promoting these kinds of things is a big investment, like you pointed out. From your experience, how do you see the potentials?
I think there’s a lot of potential for more collaboration in film. We’ve seen several film studios announced that they’re producing, kind of creating studio space here in Nigeria. The town is clearly here. A lot of that happens already with places like Atlanta, which is often referred to, is like Hollywood East. So much production is happening.

And the music industry, I mean, there’s still untapped potential, but there’s so much happening already. We’ve had a hard time getting our arms around it; and then obviously tech. The tech sector is so exciting right now with five of Africa’s nine unicorns based in Lagos. These are billion dollar valuation startups and all of them getting the majority of their funding from the United States. So, US investors see the potential of African solutions to global problems.

You seem to also have interest in arts, like artifacts, monuments and others?
One of the things we do around the world is, we have the Ambassador’s Fund for Cultural Preservation, which is a programme that helps local civil society organisations and governments preserve their cultural heritage. Many people in the United States can trace their heritage back to Nigeria. So, we recently signed a MOU and a project with the Lagos Museum to preserve wooden artifacts. And I was in Osogbo where we had done a project in the Sacred Grove, to kind of do imagery of restoration so they can do a better job restoring a site that was damaged by floodwaters and climate change.

You see the Benin bronzes that were recently returned from the Smithsonian. We have actually signed an MOU. The ambassador did, just six months ago to ensure that any artifacts that had been pilfered or stolen from Nigeria, American law enforcement agencies can now take and return them, which I think is awesome. It’s about bringing that heritage back here and giving the people a chance to value who they are.

Do you have a programme for women and children?
We do. We have a variety of programmes to support women in business and women in entrepreneurship. So, there’s a programme called the Academy of Women Entrepreneurs, which is run also out of our American corners and centres focused on helping young women leaders in business take their small businesses, or maybe their ideas from ideation and creation through how to develop a marketing plan, how to get funding and resources, how to manage employees all the way to scaling their businesses up.

And the programme does two things. One, it gives training through a graduate school of business in the United States to these female entrepreneurs and then some of them are actually given grants from the US government to help kind of launch whatever it was that they planned with their business.

But it also creates a network of women who now work together and support each other. So it, of course, creates business connections, but it also empowers women because we know when women work, the money stays in the home, it leads to school and goes to healthcare. And societies that employ their women are ones that tend to have stronger democracies and better performing GDP.

Is there anything you are doing to curb the flow of illicit funds from Africa, not just Nigeria alone, because we’ve had issues of money laundering and those laundered funds warehoused in Western nations?
Today is actually the international Anti-Corruption Day. President Biden has made countering corruption a pillar of our national security strategy. So, in June of last year, he created and put in place a variety of mechanisms where we can combat what is truly a transnational threat. Corruption is not something that Nigerians alone experience, it is something that we experience in the United States.

So it gives our government agencies the tools they need to capture stolen funds, freeze accounts and work with other governments. And we partner here with organisations like the EFCC and have actually returned, I think just recently, $33 million worth of funds that Abacha had stolen. And that’s on top of another couple of hundred of million that had been returned.

Do you share intelligence in this regard also?
I can’t talk about intelligence. I’m sorry.

I didn’t ask you to comment; I just asked whether you do share intelligence?
We work with our partners. So, what you’re seeing is in the sort of law enforcement space, a very robust partnership that is sometimes training, sometimes sharing information with one another. This is because you have Nigerian criminals operating in the United States and American criminals who operate in Nigeria. So, we share that information, and we work together to combat transnational crimes. It’s a key part of our security relationship.

QUOTE
We are really committed to supporting free, fair and credible elections in Nigeria and peaceful elections next February. And I want to be super clear. We do not support any particular candidates or parties in this election or for that matter, in any other elections. Our interest is in supporting credible elections where people feel like when they vote, their vote will be counted. So we’ve backed that up with action. We’ve supported it through technical assistance to organisations like INEC, with some of their ICT and their technology solutions. We’ve provided support to civil society organisations to increase voter awareness of the new processes to the tune of almost $45 million through USAID and other organisations.