Vice President Kashim Shettima has met with United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres at the UN headquarters in New York to discuss Nigeria’s aspirations for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council and other key areas of collaboration.
In a statement on Friday, Shettima’s Media Assistant, Stanley Nkwocha, said the Vice President urged greater UN support for Nigeria, noting that the country is “aspiring to become a permanent member of the UN Security Council.”
The bilateral talks also covered the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), climate change, democracy in Africa, and regional security partnerships with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
Nigeria’s Foreign Affairs Minister, Ambassador Yusuf Tuggar, said Guterres commended Shettima’s emphasis on Nigeria’s push for a permanent seat. Minister of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy, Dr. ‘Bosun Tijani, disclosed that discussions also touched on artificial intelligence, with Guterres welcoming Nigeria’s recent launch of its first multilingual and multimodal large language model, the first government-backed AI of its kind in Africa.
Minister of State for Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Reduction, Dr. Yusuf Sununu, highlighted Nigeria’s social investment programmes, including a national social register with 18.9 million households and conditional cash transfers reaching over 8.1 million citizens. He said the UN Secretary-General assured Nigeria of support to strengthen humanitarian efforts, authenticate its social register, and mobilise additional funding despite global aid cuts.
Earlier, Shettima also met with UK Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy MP, with both sides pledging closer cooperation in trade, defence, economy, and migration.
The Vice President later attended the Global Leadership Council Meeting at UNICEF headquarters in New York, where he stressed Nigeria’s commitment to leveraging digital opportunities for youth empowerment and women’s inclusion, describing them as “the backbone of society.”
