Tibor Nagy, vice provost for the Office of International Affairs at Texas Tech University, has been selected by the U.S. Department of State to temporarily head the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria as charge d’affaires (interim ambassador) during the month of August.
Due to the retirement of the current U.S. ambassador and the wait required for Senate confirmation of the newly nominated ambassador, the U.S. State Department needed a representative to serve in the position until the new ambassador was finalized. Because of his extensive experience in African relations, Nagy was selected to temporarily fill this key position as sometimes the U.S. State Department asks retired diplomats to take temporary assignments to assist in certain situations.
Nagy has more than 20 years of experience in African relations, including serving as general services officer in Lusaka, Zambia; administrative officer in Victoria, Seychelles; systems administrator for the African Bureau in Washington; administrative officer in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; deputy chief of mission at Lome, Togo, Yaoundé, Cameroon and Lagos, Nigeria; and U.S. ambassador to Guinea and Ethiopia.
Born in Budapest, Hungary, Nagy entered the United States as a political refugee before attending Texas Tech, where he earned his bachelor’s degree in 1972. Nagy said he is deeply honored for the opportunity to again represent the United States and promote its interests in one of the most important partner countries in Africa.
“For the U.S., Nigeria grows in importance each year because of our mutual security and economic interests,” Nagy said. “The Nigerian people are terrific, and I’m really looking forward to experiencing all the changes since my last visit many years ago.”
Because Nigeria is the world’s 15th largest nation in terms of sending international students to the U.S., Nagy plans to promote Texas Tech during his time there as an ideal option for Nigerian students seeking to study at an American university. With Nigeria’s greatest higher education needs paralleling some of the areas in which Texas Tech excels – petroleum engineering, agriculture, business and other STEM areas, for example – both Texas Tech and the students of Nigeria can benefit from this collaboration as well as from Nagy’s continued service in Africa.
(Press release from Texas Tech University)