 Well, good afternoon everyone. We hope you had a good opportunity to have some chats and have some lunch and discuss some of the mornings deliberations. We heard from a really excellent cross-section of speakers representing different parts of the Nigerian government, representing civil society and the activist community, providing us with both analytical scope and perspective, a good deal of insight into the current situation and how it's assessed in various quarters as well as different perspectives on what is occurring now and the challenges looking ahead. And so it's very fitting and appropriate and indeed quite welcome that we're joined by Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Ambassador Linda Thomas Greenfield. We're very pleased and honored to have you, particularly as she reminds me that we're looking toward in just about three weeks time a much larger gathering of official and unofficial African visitors in Washington. And so the fact that she could break away even briefly to speak to us today at this important series of events is very welcome. I won't take up much time with introductions except to note that Secretary Thomas Greenfield has been a member of the Career Foreign Service, an ambassador in Liberia, a principal deputy assistant secretary of state in the Bureau of African Affairs in the mid-2000s, and also she's been a PDAS in the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration. So she has long and deep experience and insight into the challenges of Africa as a continent and Nigeria as a country. She's been posted to Nigeria in the past as well as Gambia, Kenya, Liberia and other countries. And so brings a long legacy or a long train of experience to her remarks and her perspective today. Without any further delay but permitting her a couple of minutes to enjoy her coffee, which I can only concur as essential, we'll invite her to the podium and then we'll have a few minutes for Q&A. Good. Thank you. Thank you very much. Good afternoon. I don't know whether it's a good thing to speak to a group after lunch when you're satisfied and you've had a morning of speeches and so you feel as if you can close your eyes a bit to a boring speaker or to have spoken to you before lunch when you were hungry. But I'll do my best to keep you all interested so that you do stay awake. I'll try to make this as brief as possible so that I leave time for Q&As. Again, let me say how delighted I am to be here today. I think this is an extraordinarily important event. It's a timely event as we approach the election in Nigeria as well as a number of elections across the continent of Africa as we move into 2015. Let me start by thanking CSIS, particularly Jennifer and Richard Downey for inviting me to speak today but more importantly for hosting this event at this time. I would like to also thank our distinguished guests for making a long journey from Nigeria. Your expertise and wisdom are critical as Nigeria prepares for these important elections and I want to thank you for sharing your knowledge with us. I think we can all agree that the impressive turnout for this event is indicative of a strong interest in Nigeria's upcoming election but also is indicative of the importance of these elections, not just for Nigeria but for the entire continent. As the most populous country in Africa and as a continental power, Nigerian politics have a tremendous influence on the continent. The choices Nigerians make in this critical election will have great ramifications for the future of Nigeria and for the future of the continent but more importantly for the people of Nigeria. The United States stands as a partner and a friend to Nigeria and its people. We're ready to do everything within our power to assist in ensuring that the vote is credible and that the vote is peaceful but credibility does not start just on election day. Credibility starts months before the election and I know that's why you are all here today and why we're here today having this discussion. Through the U.S. Agency for International Development, we're working to enhance the capacity of the Independent National Election Commission. We are engaging with a wide spectrum of Nigerian leaders from the political class and civil society. We're communicating the importance that we place on this election and calling for the utmost efforts to ensure transparency and peace in the contest of the election. This includes ensuring that all voters are enfranchised, including those living in the three northeastern states currently under a state of emergency. To complete a successful election, a nation must tackle many challenges. Few of these challenges are more important than security and I'm glad that this session has focused attention on this important topic. Security issues matter during all phases of the election. During the campaign, violent words and deeds can undermine the confidence of ordinary voters in the electoral process, intimidation and thuggery can make candidates and citizens afraid to engage. And campaign violence can tarnish an election's image even before the first vote is ever cast. In the case of Nigeria developing and executing an electoral security strategy will be critical to ensuring that elections can take place in regions of the country facing the Boko Haram attacks and threats. During the vote itself, insecurity can facilitate manipulation and tampering. If a might makes right, the people's will will be overturned and we don't want to see that happen. During the post-election phase, violence can tarnish even the best run election. When results are greeted with riots, the legitimacy of the process can be called into question at home as well as abroad. Last September, I attended the U.S.-Nigeria bilateral commission in Abuja. When I met with the INAC chairman, Professor Jega, at the time, he told me that he sought not just to make the 2015 elections better than 2011, but he also wanted to meet international standards and deliver the election that the Nigerian people deserve. In fact, he indicated that he wanted this to be the best election that Nigerians have had. We hope that his promise will come true, both for the sake of Nigeria's democracy and its stability, but for that to happen Nigerians must be willing to do everything in their power to ensure that the vote proceeds not just credibly but also peacefully. You will notice that I use the word peacefully almost in every sentence here because these elections must be peaceful if they are to happen at all. That imperative places a heavy burden and a responsibility on the Nigerian security services. They will need to undertake a critical task. They have to protect civilians and protect the process. Refaining from any intimidation or tampering to enable citizens to be the decision makers about who governs them. I urge the delegates here as civil society representatives, as former government officials, to impress upon the Nigerian government, writ large, and the security services, particularly the importance of this responsibility. I urge you to hold them accountable for their performance. The United States stands ready to provide training, to provide advice to the security services in fulfilling their responsibilities and to ensure that they fulfill those responsibilities with restraint and impartiality. Mitigating violence is also the responsibility of politicians because politicians are the ones that the violence is for. And no politician should want to win an election because the people who support them fought the hardest or killed the most people or were more violent than the other party. They should want to win an election because they were the candidate of choice. People voted for them, and those who didn't vote for them accepted the choice. In my travels to Nigeria and my meetings with Nigerian leaders, I have urged politicians of all parties to avoid incendiary rhetoric and to reject intimidation and manipulation as campaign tactics. This election is too important for that. No officeholder should use the power of incumbency to intimidate challengers, and no challenger should threaten or incite violence to undermine the democratic process. I urge you to demand that politicians meet the highest standards of patriotic and honorable campaigning based on the issues that matters to citizens. It is not about them, it is about the issues. And that is a point that we have to continue to make, and voters need to understand in the education process. It is not about who is running, it is about where they stand on the issues. And too many times in African politics the issues are put in second place to the candidate, to the personality, to the person. The issues are what should matter to the voters. Being a safe election is also the responsibility of ordinary citizens. Words and signals from the top can trigger violence, but violence can also emerge from the anger that exists among the jobless, the disenfranchised and the marginalized. Many ordinary people in Nigeria have reasons to be frustrated or angry, especially many of those who have experienced the recent violence that Boko Haram has carried out in the North in Jaws, as well as in Abuja, and I just heard as I was coming in just now that Boko Haram has taken responsibility for the attack that took place in Lagos. Nigeria's economy has risen to become the largest in Africa, but over 60 percent of Nigerians live at the bottom of the economic ladder, subsisting on less than a dollar each day. And I'm not telling you anything that you don't already know. You see the people begging on the streets in Nigeria. I was in the North recently. I saw the large number of children who were begging on the streets. And as these Nigerians struggle to find work, as they struggle to feed their families, it is understandable that they question why corruption goes unpunished and the power for go unchecked. We should all work to urge Nigerians, particularly youth, to channel their grievances toward making their community and their country better. They should use their power to build, not to destroy. Every time I have been in Nigeria, I have been impressed by the vibrancy of civil society, the vibrancy of journalism, particularly impressed by the religious community, the film community, as well as other modes of expression in Nigeria. Nigerians know better how to express themselves than any group of people I know anywhere in the world. This kind of vibrancy should be used to encourage and support transparent and peaceful elections. Urging these channels, youth can and must make a positive contribution to the country's politics, not a negative one. 2015 is an opportunity for them to do this, and delegates who are here today as leaders within Nigeria's civil society, you can play a strong part in encouraging young people to constructively engage in the electoral process, using it as a window of opportunity to non-violently push for more responsive governance on the issues that matter to them. Along these lines, we are supporting efforts to channel the energies of Nigerian youth in a positive direction, as we do in countries all over the world. In Nigeria, our Conflict and Stabilization Operations Bureau supports the efforts of the Niger Delta Legacy Board, some of whom are here today. Where are you here in the room? Oh, good. I know you. Thank you for being here. So you should work as they have to harness media, engage civil society to promote the message to the communities, and in particular, youth can make nonviolent change. Here in the United States last month, we saw the kickoff of the Washington Fellowship program under President Obama's Young African Leaders Initiative. We have 500 of the most amazing young people I have met from Africa here in the United States, and they are just a drop in the bucket of the amazing. 50,000 applied for the program. Of those 50,000, only 500 were selected. There were 15,000 applications from Nigeria alone, showing how it shows how important youth are, but it shows how much they need and how much they want to be part of the process. I am looking forward to welcoming these young people to Washington from the 28th through the 30th of July when they will be hosted by the President for a town hall meeting. As I mentioned, Nigeria is one of the largest contributors, and these young people are the future leaders of Nigeria. When we are talking about political leadership, and when we are talking about leadership, we are not just talking about political leadership, but we are talking about leadership across the board. We are talking about leadership in the private sector. We are talking about civil society. We are talking about leading in communities, and I hope that these Nigerian alumni will act as catalysts for constructive change and catalysts for peace during the remainder of the election season. They are a small drop in the bucket of the young leaders across the continent, but each one can have impact on dozens of others, and we are hopeful that as we build the Yali network across Africa that we will see the catalytic impact of what these young people can do. But they have to be given space, they have to be supported, to be successful in their endeavors and to create opportunities for them, and we are all responsible for ensuring that they have the opportunities to be the leaders that we know that they are capable of being. In too many places across the globe, we see young people who are not vested in the futures of their country. They are attracted by extremist ideologies because they have no other ideology to focus on. This is what Yali has. Yali is about investing in the next generation of Africans, and it is about us doing the most that we can do to mentor them and support them. It is about finding a way to provide opportunities for these young people so that they are not attracted to organizations like Boko Haram. Instead, they will be vested in the futures of their countries, and when young people can find jobs, when they can find successful businesses, when they get a good education that they can use and have a voice in their governance, they will shun extremism, they will participate in their country's future, they will make a difference. And as we help build the next generation of Nigerians, we recognize that events are moving swiftly right now. So we are talking about the next generation, but things are happening right now. They are happening tomorrow. Election season is already on the way. On June 21st, voters went to the polls in Iqiti State in southwestern Nigeria to choose between their incumbent government or governor and a host of challenges. We engaged strongly to help make Iqiti's election the best they could possibly be. Our embassy and our consulate filled 32 observers who visited over 180 polling stations in the State, and I made calls on June 20th to the leading candidates and to key electoral and security officials. I think some of them were wondering who the heck I was, calling them when they were involved in the throes of the election. But the point was that they needed to know that this was being watched all over the world. This was not just about what was happening in Iqiti State, but it was about how what was happening in Iqiti State would be reviewed all over the world. The elections proceeded relatively peacefully, and when the results were made clear that Governor Fajimi, the incumbent governor, had lost, he graciously conceded. Overall, the security services performed admirably in ensuring that the safety of the voters and INEC administered what was considered a credible election. Yet we are concerned by reports that the military restricted the movements of leading opposition politicians from outside Iqiti. When voters go to the polls in an Osun State on August 9th, the world will be watching again closely to see whether the prerogatives of all parties and all voters are respected. And I am hopeful that this election will turn out even better than the Iqiti election because we will have had the experience of Iqiti learn from any mistakes that were made and ensure that it is a better process. The elections in Iqiti and Osun are the last off-cycle elections before the national and state elections that take place in February. As of today, we are seven months until the national vote. And again, the world will be watching Nigeria as it makes its final preparations. Events like what we are doing here today at CSIS contribute to the tough but fruitful conversations that Nigerians are having about their future. Just as we have benefited from hearing from this panel and experts today, it is my hope that our distinguished guests will leave here with renewed enthusiasm for the vital work of securing Nigeria's democracy, the largest democracy on the continent of Africa and one of the largest in the world. As ever, the United States will work hard to aid that effort and to support those efforts. In less than a month, as you heard earlier, President Obama will host leaders from across Africa, including from Nigeria, for the Historic U.S. Africa Leaders Summit. This is the first time we have had a summit like this in Washington. And certainly the themes that we have discussed here would be part of the conversations as we collectively look at governing for the future and what that means on the continent of Africa. We have been consulting closely with our African partners to ensure that this is a successful and a transformational event. The President and Secretary Kerry are looking forward to the summit as you can well expect that I am as well. Let me thank all of you very much for your attention, for sharing your wisdom with us today at this conference. And again, I want to thank CSIS for hosting this event. I look forward to taking some questions from you. Thank you very much. Okay, we'll take a group of questions and then we'll let Secretary Thomas Greenfield respond. Yeah. Ambassador, you get to ask questions all the time. And I see you every day. It is a question. My dear sister, I'm going to disappoint you. I'm not going to ask a question. I think I had enough answering questions last Thursday at the Hill. It was a thorough three hour grilling, so I'm not inclined to have that. I just want to say on behalf of the Government of Nigeria, how grateful we are to the U.S. government and to you personally for the interest we have taken in Nigeria, particularly in these and forthcoming elections. In 2011, the U.S. government through several agencies supported INEC and other agencies towards the organization of the most successful election ever in Nigeria. And you've always given support to INEC and other agencies to ensure that the experience of 2011 is not only, it's not only repeated but also improved upon. Just about two, three months ago, you were in Nigeria. We had a meeting of the U.S. Nigeria by national commission. That is the commission through which there are four components of that commission. One of them is focus on transparency, governance and integrity. It is through that component that the U.S. contributes and assists Nigeria in organizing a successful election. We met last in Abuja. Next meeting is being planned. I'm still discussing with my boss here, the head of Nigerian office. And that's another thing is the U.S. government has to create a separate office taking us out of West Africa. We are two months away from West Africa. They're taking us out of West Africa and creating a specific office to deal with Nigeria. That shows the strategic importance with the U.S. attaches to Nigeria. And for that, we are very grateful. So I just want to assure you that on behalf of the Nigerian government, we appreciate what your government is doing. We appreciate what you personally are doing because we call her Omo Wale, a child that has come back home. She has served in Nigeria and she's been in Nigeria so many times that other ambassadors from African countries are asking, why is Linda always going to Nigeria? You can't compare Nigeria to most of these African countries. Anyway. So we are very grateful. I just want to assure you that we know the importance of the elections to Nigeria. We know what elections means to America's urge to see a very peaceful, peaceful world. And we know what it, one importantly, we know what it means to us. We are determined to make it a success because we know the security of our country depends on it. And I want to assure you that in spite of what is happening, in spite of 10,000 bookarounds, we are going to make the 2015 elections a success. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, over here, please. Hi, I'm Brenda Humphrey and I'm a former Ford fellow in city planning. And I lived and worked in Liberia as a, of course, city planner. I'm wondering if there are any instructive parallels from the elections in Liberia that you would share with us that might apply to Nigeria. Okay. You want to take a few? Yeah, I'm going to take a few. Thank you. Good afternoon. Let me also join others to thank, you know, her excellency for this wonderful presentation and for the interest and passion that she has on Nigeria. I met her, I think, when she was in Abuja in one of those streets, you know, at the Ambassador House. I just want to ask, you know, specifically on the Obama meeting with African leaders. I know when the concept, you know, was developed, the embassy circulated it to some people and I was one of the people who commented, you know, I was asked to comment on the concept. But I'm not aware whether civil society are going to be part of that process because so far I have not had any Nigerian civil society being invited to be part of this very historic, you know, meeting. So I want to know whether there's any plan, although it's getting late, you know, whether there's going to be any civil society from Nigeria that will be part of that process. Thank you. Okay, thanks. Did see one over here? Yes. My name is Andrew Chawmumu and I'm an attorney, a practice here. Both Nigerian Constitution and the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Act permit dual citizenship, which means that millions of Nigerians in America can vote. Now, question for you is, is there anything the United States can do to help Nigeria actualize the diaspora votes for Nigeria? Thank you. My name is Sally Booker, Madam Secretary. This question is about security cooperation with Nigeria. Current U.S. laws, specifically the Leahy laws, restrict the U.S. government's ability to provide military or security training in cooperation with individuals or units who there is a credible evidence that they've been engaged in gross violations of human rights. Now, currently this restriction renders ineligible maybe one-fifth of Nigeria's security forces from training in cooperation with the U.S. military and State Department. President Obama has announced his intention to seek to circumvent this law through a waiver in his request for the $5 billion counterterrorism partnership fund that he's requesting of Congress. My question is simply, what's the rationale for seeking that kind of waiver, and particularly in the case of Nigeria, where the United States really wants to improve the human rights performance of the Nigerian security forces? Okay. I think I have enough to keep me going for a while. Thank you, Ambassador Adifuye, for your comments. Again, we are working very, very closely with the government and civil society, security services, and others to ensure that the elections are free, fair, and peaceful. I very much appreciate the dialogue that we had with the Nigerian government back in February that looked at all of these areas across the board. On Liberia, where we were successful in achieving very good election results, both in 2006 and in 2011, I think there are some lessons to be learned. I think there was a strong commitment on the part of the government for the elections to go well, and as well on the part of the opposition. We held a lot of meetings with the opposition and with the government in the lead-up to the election. What was different about Liberia, that won't be the case in Liberia, is that there was the international community, a huge peacekeeping force there to help to ensure security and peace during the election. That was a bit unusual. But also, I think civil society played a huge part in making sure that people were educated and prepared and understood the process of voting. And again, these are all lessons that we can learn. And thank you for that question, because we did have successful elections. On civil society participation in the Head of State Summit, there is a variety of opportunities for civil society to participate. On the 4th of August, there is a large civil society event that will be hosted by the Secretary of State at the National Academy of Sciences. And he will be holding a town hall meeting where they will be taking questions online and Twitter as well. But there are 30-plus side events around Washington, including events that are being hosted by the Congress that will have intense civil society involvement. I don't know who has been invited to all of these various events, but I do know that there are quite a few. And there should be opportunities for participation across the board by civil society. I'm not sure on dual citizens. I think I'm going to throw that question at the ambassador, because I have known in other cases where countries do allow for dual citizens to vote. The votes usually take place at the embassies. And that's what we do in the United States. And I would encourage Ambassador Adi Fulye, the Nigerian government, to look for possibilities of allowing votes at the embassies or at the numerous counselates that exist across the United States for those Nigerian citizens who are registered to vote. I support the idea of dual citizens being allowed to participate in the election. And again, it's not something that we can do, but we certainly support those efforts. On Lehi, the Department of State strongly supports Lehi. It is part of our programs that allow us to provide assistance to the governments that we work with across the board. Those that are involved, that we have credible evidence of their involvement in human rights violations or other gross acts against civilians, are not part of our program. I can't comment on, I think, the law you're referring to provide some opportunities for our colleagues in DOD to continue to support some groups. But I think in the final analysis, there's no question that we don't want to support anyone who might use the training or equipment that we provided to them to commit acts of human rights violations against citizens. So there is no effort on our part to circumvent Lehi. We have embraced Lehi and we are trying to ensure that the implementation of Lehi occurs in a way that respects human rights. So again, this is not an effort to get around or circumvent the law. Again, let me thank all of you again for all of your efforts here. This is going to be a huge contribution to Nigeria's electoral process. Your efforts, your work, whether you're working in civil society or you're working in government or your advocacy groups in the United States will make a huge difference on how successful this election is. So again, I encourage you and support your efforts. And I'll look forward to congratulating Nigeria in February of 2015 for a successful, peaceful, transparent election that reflects the will of the people of Nigeria. Thank you very much.