Aug. 25 (GIN) - Commentators are still analyzing Hillary Clinton’s straight-talking speech in Nigeria during her swing through Africa one week ago. The Secretary of State pulled no punches at the Abuja Town Hall meeting on Aug. 13. "While Nigeria is a country that produces 2 million barrels of oil a day," she said, "with the seventh-largest natural gas reserves of any country in the world, the poverty rate is up."
"Forget that she reminded us that the poverty rate in Nigeria has gone up from 46 percent to 76 percent over the last 13 years," wrote Nigerian writer Salisu Suleiman Suleiman on the website SaharaReporters.com. "Forget that she attributed the failure to corruption, lack of capacity or mismanagement, or that the World Bank recently concluded that Nigeria has lost well over $300 billion during the last three decades to corruption. None of that is new."
"We must confront the state of roads that cannot be driven on; water that is laced with disease; rivers that are glazed with waste; millions of people with no work to do; elected officials that steal us blind and their unelected relatives that rob us to starvation point," Suleiman wrote.
"The most important message she delivered to Nigerians is that: ‘Nigeria is at a crossroads, and it is imperative that citizens be engaged and that civic organizations be involved in helping to chart the future of this great nation’... the future of Nigeria is up to the Nigerians’.
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