UNGA 2026: When the canyons reach our doorstep
By Dakuku Peterside
Past experiences show that Nigerians show up in large numbers on the world stage, even when the country has no direct stake in the outcome. Every September, when world leaders go to New York for the United Nations General Assembly, Nigeria sends one of the largest delegations with little or no brief, no bilateral meetings, no follow-up plan, and no report to deliver when they return. For some, UNGA is probably a shopping trip paid for by the state. It is a way of being seen, not a way of being heard.
The most revealing moment after a United Nations speech may be the journey home. The cameras are gone; the applause has faded; the promises must find their way into budgets, instructions, and difficult conversations. Nigeria spoke at the 2026 General Assembly. The question now is what its government will do with the words it carried to New York.
On 22 September, António Guterres opened the General Debate with a bleak image: the world’s cracks had become canyons. Wars were testing the authority of law, inequality was eroding trust, and institutions built at an earlier age were struggling to contain new divisions. In his final opening address as Secretary-General, he did not pronounce the United Nations dead. He insisted that cooperation and reform remain possible and necessary. The distinction matters. Despair asks nothing of leaders; reform demands action.
Two days later, Vice-President Kashim Shettima delivered Nigeria’s statement on behalf of President Bola Tinubu. He addressed Sudan and the Sahel and pressed for Security Council reform. Nigeria was represented, and its case was heard. But representation is not the whole question. At a gathering that places leaders within reach of one another, the President’s repeated absence deserves scrutiny.
Guterres’s candour gives Nigeria an opening. For years, Nigeria and the African Union have argued that the Security Council and global financial institutions reflect an older distribution of power. He called the absence of permanent African seats unjust and indefensible; the African Union seeks at least two. His warning reinforces the case for reform, including Nigeria’s ambition for a seat. It does not guarantee one. A credible claim must grow from African consensus, the confidence of smaller states and a record of useful leadership.
Yet President Tinubu has missed the General Assembly for a third consecutive year, sending Shettima to the 81st session as he did in 2024 and 2025. The Vice-President can speak for Nigeria and conduct serious diplomacy; this year, he did. Still, a president has access to counterparts and authority to make commitments that a deputy may not always command. When Abuja asks to reshape the highest forum for international security, Tinubu should explain why he has repeatedly passed up its most concentrated week of direct presidential diplomacy. His absence is a choice that warrants an account, even if its precise diplomatic cost cannot be assumed.
A president may have sound reasons not to attend, and no leader can attend every international meeting. But three consecutive absences form a pattern that calls for more than the assurance that Nigeria was represented. Did another engagement yield a greater diplomatic return? Which bilateral opportunities did the delegation pursue, and which required later presidential contact? Answering such questions would respect Shettima’s work while treating the President’s time as a public resource. Silence leaves Nigerians to measure a consequential choice by speculation rather than results.
Influence abroad is earned at home and exercised in person. Insecurity, poverty, and a severe cost-of-living squeeze diminish the force of Nigeria’s appeals. So does a regional relationship defined more by estrangement than trust. The country’s claim to speak for Africa depends on performance and presence: what it helps neighbours achieve, and whether its leaders invest their own time in the cause they ask others to support.
Sudan brings those responsibilities into focus. Its war has uprooted millions and made ordinary survival precarious. It deserves sustained diplomacy, humanitarian access, and pressure on those who fuel the violence. African governments must lead, but the countries and institutions with influence over the combatants cannot evade their obligations. Nigeria’s words about Sudan should therefore be followed by a clear account of the diplomatic channels it will use, the partners it will work with and the relief it will support. The suffering of Sudanese people should not become another paragraph in a speech that ends when the session closes.
The Sahel poses a test even closer to Nigeria. Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger have broken with ECOWAS, while threats cross borders that no government can police alone. Political disagreement need not end practical cooperation. Abuja should keep channels open for intelligence sharing, border management, trade, and humanitarian access, even when relations are strained. Rebuilding trust will take patience and reciprocity. Whatever the precise effect of the institutional split on cross-border threats, neighbours facing a common danger need ways to work together.
This regional argument has a domestic mirror. Soldiers and security personnel confront armed groups at grave personal risk. Their work is indispensable. Yet the durability of a security gain depends on what follows: justice for victims, accountable local authority, functioning schools, and economic choices beyond joining an armed group. A community cannot be ordered to trust a state that appears only in an armoured vehicle. If Nigeria calls for diplomacy to restrain force abroad, it should make political settlement and fair governance visible parts of its security effort at home.
Global disorder also reaches Nigeria through the price of daily life. War can disrupt shipping and raise the cost of wheat, fertiliser, and fuel inputs. A rise in crude prices may lift export earnings and public receipts even as transport and food become dearer for families. The effects vary; conflict does not mechanically weaken the naira. But the exposure is real. Oil remains important to foreign exchange and public finances, while dependence on imported essentials transmits shocks to households least able to absorb them. Economic resilience is part of national security, not a slogan reserved for investment conferences.
These problems connect to a single question of credibility. A government asking the world to reform institutions must show that it takes its own institutions seriously. A state seeking influence in Africa must be useful to its neighbours. A leadership that invokes human security abroad must make its citizens safer and less vulnerable at home. None of this requires perfection before Nigeria can speak. It does require candour about the gap between aspiration and result.
Five priorities follow. First, future delegations should be lean, professional, and led by the President when the stakes call for direct negotiation. Second, Nigeria should rebuild working ties with the Sahel states through patient ECOWAS diplomacy. Third, it should match security operations with justice, local governance, and opportunity in affected communities. Fourth, it should diversify export earnings and public revenue while reducing exposure to essential imports, so distant wars do not dictate the price of bread in Yenagoa or Kano. Fifth, it should work with major powers where interests align without becoming captive to any of them. Each priority requires a responsible official, resources, and a date by which progress can be judged.
That distance can be measured. Within weeks of UNGA, the government should publish a concise account of the delegation’s cost, its substantive meetings, the commitments made or sought, the official responsible for each follow-up and the date by which progress will be reported. Diplomatic confidentiality does not excuse silence: a government can state an objective and a public milestone without exposing a private negotiation. Parliament, journalists, and citizens would then be able to distinguish a useful journey from an expensive performance.
The first report need not pretend that every request succeeded. It should say where support for African representation advanced, what cooperation on Sudan or the Sahel became possible, and which economic discussions produced a next step. Where nothing was agreed, it should say what blocked progress and what Nigeria intends to try next. Honest failure can inform policy. A triumphant communiqué that conceals the absence of follow-through cannot.
Guterres’s speech was a warning and a call to reform, not a cure he can impose before his term ends. The canyons are too wide for one summit to bridge. Nigeria has spoken for reform, cooperation, and African dignity. Let it now put names, dates, and resources behind those words. When its delegation returns to New York, its strongest speech will be an account of what it has done since it left.
- Dr Dakuku Peterside, a leadership and management expert, is the author of Leading in a Storm.
