President Bola Tinubu has urged the United Nations and global leaders to embrace sweeping restructurings or risk irrelevance. He recently revealed that the UN’s credibility is constantly being undermined by the gap between its words and deeds.
Speaking while delivering a strongly worded reform policy proposal to the United Nations, he criticized the UN’s record, describing the ongoing human suffering in the Middle East and other regions as “stains on our collective humanity.”
According to him, the United Nations will only recover its relevance when it starts to reflect the world as it currently is, not as it once was.
“For all our careful diplomatic language, the slow pace of progress on these hardy perennials of the UN General Assembly debate has led some to look away from the multilateral model.
Some years ago, I noticed a shift at this gathering: key events were beginning to take place outside this hall, and the most sought-after voices were no longer heads of state.
Nigeria must have a permanent seat at the UN Security Council. This should take place as part of a wider process of institutional reform. The United Nations will recover its relevance only when it reflects the world as it is, not as it was,” he said.
President Tinubu further outlined 4 key reform demands, starting with Nigeria’s call for permanent membership on the UN Security Council.
The President concluded by emphasising Nigeria’s transformation from “a colony of 20 million people, absent from the tables where decisions about our fate were taken” to “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.”
“When we speak of nuclear disarmament, the proliferation of small weapons, Security Council reform, fair access to trade and finance, and the conflicts and human suffering across the world, we must recognise the truth. These are stains on our collective humanity.
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.
I am calling for a new and binding mechanism to manage sovereign debt, a sort of International Court of Justice for money, that will allow emerging economies to escape the economic straitjacket of primary production of unprocessed exports.
Africa – and I must include Nigeria – has in abundance the critical minerals that will drive the technologies of the future. Investment in exploration, development and processing of these minerals, in Africa, will diversify supply to the international market, reduce tensions between major economies and help shape the architecture for peace and prosperity,” he added.
