NEW YORK, United States – Vice President Senator Kashim Shettima, GCON, has declared that the continuous exclusion of the African continent from permanent membership of the United Nations Security Council compromises the democratic legitimacy, equity, and moral foundation of the global multilateral architecture, diplomatic correspondents reported from the United Nations Headquarters in New York on Sunday morning, September 27, 2026.
The Vice President stated Nigeria’s position during a bilateral consultative meeting with the United Nations Deputy Secretary-General, Hajiya Amina J. Mohammed, on the margins of the 81st Session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
Okay News reports that in an official executive dispatch issued on Sunday by the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Communications in the Office of the Vice President, Stanley Nkwocha, Shettima affirmed that Nigeria remains resolute in championing structural reforms within the Bretton Woods institutions and the United Nations to reflect 21st-century geopolitical and demographic realities.
Commending United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres for his public stance that a Security Council devoid of permanent African representation is unjust and indefensible, the Vice President argued that a continent of over 1.4 billion people cannot remain marginalized from highest-level international security decision-making.
“A continent cannot be summoned to bear the burdens of the international order and then denied an equal hand in directing it,” Shettima stated during the bilateral audience. “Nigeria will continue to support reforms that make international institutions more representative, responsive and credible.”
The Vice President lauded Secretary-General Guterres for defending international law and the sovereignty of vulnerable populations amid escalating conflicts across Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and the Sudano-Sahelian belt.
“You have remained a voice of reason as individual states drift from the obligations they assumed under the United Nations Charter and the rules of international law,” the Vice President observed. “You have insisted that sovereignty carries duties, that might confers no licence to injure, and that the worth of a human life cannot vary with the flag above it.”
Shettima cautioned that multilateral diplomacy risks losing its institutional purpose if international assemblies reduce humanitarian crises to diplomatic jargon.
“The mother searching for her child, the family driven from home and the hungry child awaiting food must never become abstractions in the language of states,” he remarked. “Nigeria will remain a willing ally in the work of restoring trust among nations and dignity to lives diminished by hunger, violence and exclusion. We owe our children a world in which conscience has authority and the law has meaning. Civilisation endures only when the suffering of a stranger becomes a claim on our conscience.”
Paying tribute to Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed, the Vice President praised her stewardship of the Sustainable Development Goals and multilateral financing frameworks, describing her leadership at the apex of global diplomacy as an enduring source of pride to Nigeria and Africa.
In her response, Deputy Secretary-General Mohammed expressed gratitude to the Nigerian government and President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, GCFR, for providing steadfast institutional support to the United Nations secretariat and her office.
“It is a deep honour to have your esteemed delegation here to come and surprise me; I am truly honoured and grateful,” Mohammed stated. “I want to thank through you, the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, and you for embracing me wholeheartedly not just as the DSG but as a daughter of the soil. He has been an incredible support to me, and he has also supported this institution.”
The Vice President was accompanied to the meeting by Kwara State Governor and Nigeria Governors’ Forum Chairman, AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq; Benue State Governor, Rev. Fr. Hyacinth Alia; Rivers State Governor, Siminalayi Fubara; Zamfara State Governor, Dauda Lawal; Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ambassador Bianca Odumegwu-Ojukwu; and Nigeria’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Ambassador Jimoh Ibrahim.
