Nigeria’s Permanent Seat At UN Security Council Is Long Overdue – Tinubu

Bola Tinubu and Kashim Shettima

The Federal Government has renewed its bid for a permanent seat at the United Nations’ Security Council as part of a wider process of institutional reforms.

FG recently cited the country’s growing population and its status as a stabilising force in regional security and a consistent partner in global peacekeeping efforts.

Speaking during the general debate of the 80th session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in New York City, USA, President Bola Tinubu, represented by Kashim Shettima, said that Nigeria’s population has grown to more than 200 million and the nation’s military has participated in 51 out of 60 United Nations peacekeeping operations since her independence in 1960.

According to President Tinubu, urgent action is needed to promote sovereign debt relief and access to trade and financing for emerging economies.

He emphasized the need for nations hosting minerals to benefit fairly from those resources through investment, partnership, local processing, and jobs, while advocating for a futuristic initiative to unite researchers, the private sector, governments, and communities to close the digital divide and promote access to technology.

“United Nations will recover its relevance only when it reflects the world as it is, not as it was. Nigeria’s journey tells this story with clarity. When the UN was founded, we were a colony of 20 million people, absent from the tables where decisions about our fate were taken; today, we are a sovereign nation of over 236 million, projected to be the third most populous country in the world, with one of the youngest and most dynamic populations on earth.

A stabilising force in regional security and a consistent partner in global peacekeeping, our case for permanent seat at the Security Council is a demand for fairness, for representation, and for reform that restores credibility to the very institution upon which the hope of multilateralism rests.

This is why Nigeria stands firmly behind the UN80 Initiative of the Secretary-General, and the resolution adopted by this Assembly on 18 July 2025, a bold step to reform the wider United Nations system for greater relevance, efficiency, and effectiveness in the face of unprecedented financial strain. “We support the drive to rationalise structures and end the duplication of responsibilities and programmes, so that this institution may speak with one voice and act with greater coherence,” he said.

Tinubu further reaffirmed Nigeria’s commitment to peace, development, unity, multilateralism, and human rights, stressing the importance of collective action and cooperation in resolving global challenges.

The President concluded by condemning the ongoing Israeli assault in Gaza, while advocating for a two-state solution through recognition of the state of Palestine, as a pathway to resolve the ongoing war in Gaza.

“We are despised by terrorists because we choose tolerance over tyranny. Their ambition is to divide us and to poison our humanity with a toxic rhetoric of hate. Our difference is the distance between shadow and light, between despair and hope, between the ruin of anarchy and the promise of order. We do not only fight wars, we feed and shelter the innocent victims of war. This is why we are not indifferent to the devastations of our neighbours, near and distant.

This is why we speak of the violence and aggression visited upon innocent civilians in Gaza, the illegal attack on Qatar, and the tensions that scar the wider region. It is not only because of the culture of impunity that makes such acts intolerable, but because our own bitter experience has taught us that such violence never ends where it begins.

We do not believe that the sanctity of human life should be trapped in the corridors of endless debate. That is why we say, without stuttering and without doubt, that a two-state solution remains the most dignified path to lasting peace for the people of Palestine. For too long, this community has borne the weight of moral conflict.

For too long, we have been caught in the crossfire of violence that offends the conscience of humanity.

We come not as partisans, but as peacemakers. We come as brothers and sisters of a shared world, a world that must never reduce the right to live into the currency of devious politics. The people of Palestine are not collateral damage in a civilisation searching for order. They are human beings, equal in worth, entitled to the same freedoms and dignities that the rest of us take for granted,” he added.