Kashim Shettima, Vice President of Nigeria, said that Africa cannot keep filling the Security Council’s agenda while remaining absent from its permanent membership. Nigeria demands at least two permanent Council seats for Africa as well as five non-permanent seats, he said, adding: “The authority to speak for humanity carries an obligation to represent it.”
“We reject the false choice between development and climate action,” he continued, emphasizing Nigeria’s commitment to the Paris Agreement as it strives to achieve net-zero emissions by 2060. Climate finance must be governed by equity and shared responsibility, not charity, through well-funded mechanisms that help developing countries pursue climate action without compromising development objectives.
“Much of the anxiety surrounding AI reflects the distrust we have allowed to grow among us,” he said, inviting the world to work with young Nigerians to steer artificial intelligence towards humanity’s advancement and not its destruction.
Inadequate financing is a major obstacle to sustainable development, he added, calling for international financial reform, greater access to concessional financing and improved debt sustainability frameworks.
He hailed the African Continental Free Trade Area as a transformative opportunity that offers exceptional scope to deepen regional integration, speed up industrialization and strengthen Africa’s place in global value chains. “Our abundant natural resources must become engines of shared prosperity, rather than sources of perpetual dependency,” he said.
He went on to say that Nigeria’s long-running struggle against Boko Haram, Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) and other armed groups has shown that military victories must be accompanied by education, economic opportunity, accountable governance and communities in which rights and dignity are protected.
“Development cannot take root where violence repeatedly uproots livelihoods,” he said, “and peace cannot endure where injustice and exclusion replenish the ranks of those who threaten it”.
