Acting President of the Federal President of Nigeria Goodluck Jonathan has sacked the entire cabinet. He has replaced the ill and absent President Umaru Yar'Adua.
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•Ratify deal on N’Delta, trade, energy and security
From Tokunbo Adedoja in New York, 04.04.2010
In the first major bi-national agreement with an African country in a long time, the United States will on Wednesday sign a historic comprehensive commission pact with Nigeria in New York. Under the bi-national commission agreement, the two countries would be cooperating in four areas.
The areas, according to the Nigerian Ambassador to the United States, Professor Adebowale Adefuye, are trade and energy; Niger Delta; electoral reform; and peace and security.
The agreement is expected to be followed by the visit of Acting President Goodluck Jonathan to the United States for the nuclear security summit which holds between April 11 and 14. Diplomatic sources in Washington told THISDAY that the Acting President had already accepted President Barack Obama’s invitation to the summit.
Speaking to THISDAY in New York, Ambassador Adefuye said the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Alhaji Ahmed Yayale, would sign on behalf of Nigeria as leader of the delegation consisting of top government officials while the United States Secretary of State, Senator Hilary Clinton, would sign for her country.
The signing ceremony is coming barely a week after the US put aside the emergency aviation security measures she announced on January 3, this year, which classified Nigeria as a “country of interest”, following the botched attempt to bomb an American airliner by a Nigerian, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.
Diplomatic sources also told THISDAY last night that the development would further strengthen relations between the two nations.
The Nigerian-US relations have continued to improve since the restoration of democracy in 1999 and the two countries have been cooperating on many important foreign policy goals, including regional peacekeeping.
While an estimated one million Nigerians and Nigerian-Americans are believed to live, study, and work in the United States, over 25,000 Americans live and work in Nigeria.
The exclusion of Nigeria from the list of countries visited by Obama during his first official visit to Africa last year, however, brought to the front burner, the fears that Nigeria might gradually be losing its prime status in American foreign policy focus to neighbouring countries on the West African coast.
The US Secretary of State, Clinton, visited Nigeria last August in her first official trip to Africa, during which time she held talks with top Nigerian government officials and expressed US position on several issues especially the anti-corruption war, which she said had lost steam.
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