ABUJA, Nigeria — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton sent a message of tough love to Nigeria on Wednesday, praising the country’s strong military and showing public appreciation for its huge oil industry, but also harshly criticizing the government for being corrupt.
Mrs. Clinton thanked Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country and typically its biggest oil producer, for its help in resolving wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone and for providing peacekeepers to Sudan.
“The people in Liberia owe their freedom to you,” she said. “People across Africa owe so much to you.”
But when it came to the topic of corruption — and Nigeria is notoriously corrupt, from top ministers in the government to the plump police officers on the street — Mrs. Clinton took a decidedly different tone.
She told a crowd of civic leaders that the reason so many millions of Nigerians were desperately poor, despite the nation’s having so much oil, was “a failure of government at the federal, state and local level.”
She also spoke of flawed elections and a lack of public trust that has seriously eroded the credibility of the Nigerian government.
“Nigeria is at a crossroads,” she said.
America’s ties to Nigeria are a crucial piece of the reinvigorated relationship that the Obama administration is trying to strike with Africa. It has 150 million people and is the world’s fifth largest supplier of crude oil to the United States. It could supply even more, but heavily armed insurgents in the oil producing areas have hampered drilling operations by blowing up pipelines and kidnapping oil workers, seemingly at will.
There is some hope that this problem, which has been raging for years, may finally be easing. The Nigerian government recently offered an amnesty program to rebel fighters, and despite ample skepticism from experts and the rebels themselves, Nigerian officials said that many combatants had indicated that they were willing to surrender.
“There was a need to be bold and imaginative,” said Nigeria’s foreign minister, Ojo Maduekwe, who met with Mrs. Clinton for more than an hour on Wednesday. “Old methods were not going to be good enough.”
The United States and Nigeria already cooperate closely on military affairs, with many of Nigeria’s top officers having passed through American military academies. Mrs. Clinton said that the Nigerian defense minister asked her on Wednesday for specific American military help to quash the remaining rebels in the oil producing areas, and that the American government would look closely at the request.
Nigeria is the fifth stop on Mrs. Clinton’s 11-day, seven-nation African tour. Next she will go to Liberia and Cape Verde, then head home on Friday.
Earlier on Wednesday, Mrs. Clinton struck a more conciliatory tone with Nigeria’s leaders. At a news conference with Mr. Maduekwe, she said, “We strongly support and encourage the government of Nigeria’s efforts to increase transparency, reduce corruption” and prepare for a clean national election in 2011, after a deeply flawed one in 2007.
Mrs. Clinton avoided answering a question about the Nigerian government’s recent crackdown on an extremist Islamic group. According to some reports, more than 700 people were killed a few weeks ago, many of them civilians, and the rebel leader was widely believed to have been executed in police custody.
Mrs. Clinton said she did not have enough information to comment on the operation. The group at the heart of the government’s assault — Boko Haram, a Hausa expression meaning “Western education is prohibited” — has no known links to any broader organizations. Still, Mrs. Clinton said that “we have no doubt that Al Qaeda has a presence in North Africa” and that terrorists would “seek a foothold wherever they can.”
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