Former presidential aide Laolu Akande says President Bola Tinubu must appoint ambassadors to strategic countries for Nigeria to stand a chance to clinch a permanent seat on the United Nations (UN) Security Council.
At the UN General Assembly recently, Tinubu, represented by Vice President Kashim Shettima, demanded seats for Africa on the UN Security Council.
Akande, however, said for such demand to be effective, the president should swiftly appoint ambassadors to push Nigeria’s diplomatic agenda overseas.
He said, “The President may begin to look at the issues of naming ambassadors because if we really want to get this seat, we need an ambassador in New York, we need an ambassador in Washington DC, we need in London.
“There are key places where we should have ambassadors, even in Africa. Even if you don’t want to do the whole over 100, do like 10 of key places so that we can get in early.
“I think it will be very difficult if there are two seats on the Permanent Membership and on the Security Council and Nigeria doesn’t get it… We have a lot of work to do because there are very strong resistance.”
On September 2, 2023, some three months after Tinubu, an ex-Lagos governor, was inaugurated Nigeria’s President, he recalled all career and political Nigerian ambassadors manning over 100 Nigerian embassies and high commissions from their host countries.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Yusuf Tuggar, had said the ambassadors served at the behest of the President in their host nations and it was the President’s “prerogative to send or recall them from any country”.
However, over a year after, the President has not sent a list of fresh ambassadors to the Senate for approval and onward deployment to missions abroad despite that Nigeria has been playing host to the ambassadors of other countries with missions in the nation’s capital, Abuja.
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