Meeting With US Vice President, Kamala Harris At The White House, Washington D.C, U.S.A On 02/09/2022

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REMARKS BY HIS EXCELLENCY, PROF. YEMI OSINBAJO, SAN, GCON, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA AT A PRESS BRIEFING WITH KAMALA HARRIS, THE VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES AT THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON D.C, UNITED STATES ON THE 2^ND OF SEPTEMBER, 2022

Thank you very much Vice President Kamala Harris for receiving me here at the White House and my visit is an opportunity to re-affirm the close ties that exist between our countries. The United States has been a long-standing partner and friend of Nigeria and even as long ago as independence, the United States has been a firm supporter of all our aspirations, especially our economic and social development ambitions, the US has always been with us.

We also must appreciate the firm support that we have received from the US, especially in our fight against terrorism within our borders and in the Sahel and of course, the very timely donation of vaccines, 4 million vaccines as we battled the COVID-19 pandemic and that, of course, was extremely useful.

In addition, as we pointed out our shared views on democracy and the international rule-based system, we very strongly believe that in the coming years we will need to work together again on so many global challenges that are varied, and they come up very frequently now, from promoting peace and security, to tackling global health issues and climate change and of course economic adversity.

I must also congratulate you because of the Inflation Reduction Act and in particular, this is historic, especially for those of us who are paying attention to all the issues of Climate Change. The Climate Change component is really ambitious and we think that it shows US leadership in the area of Climate Change and we are all excited to queue behind the US and see that we get many of these objectives on the way.

On our part, as you pointed out already, the Nigerian government launched its Energy Transition Plan just last week. This Plan is important for us because we see energy, especially the climate crisis as two existential issues; one is the crisis, second is the energy poverty which is an issue for us in our part of the world. So while we look forward to the 2060 carbon neutrality goal, we are also hoping that even within a shorter period by 2030, we will deal with the issue of energy poverty.

So we are anxious to get all the support we can. In the last two days, I have been talking to a few agencies here, the World Bank, USAID, in fact, the Treasury Secretary yesterday also. They have all been very positive and shown indications that they will be very helpful indeed.

We look forward to the coming years and months for even greater collaboration and stronger ties between our countries to create a fairer, more prosperous and perhaps a greener, also freer nation and nations and the world.

Thank you again for hosting me, this is a great honour indeed.