Clinton's August 2000 visit was a deliberate vote of confidence in the new Obasanjo civilian administration, sworn in fourteen months earlier. He flew into Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja, on the evening of 25 August, and on 26 August addressed a joint session of the Nigerian National Assembly — only the second time a sitting US President had addressed a foreign legislature (the first being Reagan to the Irish Dáil in 1984). His speech praised the 'astonishing courage' of the June 12 movement, named MKO Abiola and Kudirat Abiola, and committed Washington to supporting Nigeria's anti-corruption recovery effort.
The substantive bilateral file covered debt relief (Nigeria was then carrying about US$28 billion of Paris Club debt), the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative, and the implementation of the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), which Clinton had signed into law in May 2000 and which would dominate Nigerian non-oil exports for the next fifteen years. Clinton also visited a USAID-funded HIV/AIDS project in Abuja and held a town-hall meeting at the University of Abuja with Nigerian civil-society leaders. The 'Lagos leg' of the visit was cancelled at the last minute on security grounds.