Twenty-two years ago, precisely the 20th of August, 2002, I laid out an argument published in the Vanguard Newspapers on why Nigeria should be admitted into permanent membership of the United Nations Security Council, the highest decision-making organ within the global governance machinery established under the 1945 Charter of the United Nations, which replaced the defunct 1920 Covenant of the League of Nations established in the aftermath of the First World War (WW1) mainly to prevent wars amongst nations through collective security and disarmament but it could not do much to prevent the Second World War (WW2) with far more devastating consequences. I am making the same plea today: Nigeria deserves a permanent seat on the UN Security Council for reasons outlined hereunder.
The dominant impulse which led to the birth of the United Nations was the need to put in place a global system of governance that would put an end to the extreme miseries that both the first and second world wars bought upon humanity as was prophetically articulated at the famous Dumbarton Oaks Conference (1944) attended by the victorious allies of the Second World War. They recommended the establishment of an international organisation that would be made up of a “General Assembly, a Security Council and an International Court of Justice” – a supranational government!
It is a fact of life that it is usually the victors who set out the terms for the post-war engagements and so it came to be that the victorious Allied nations formulated the new principles that would govern the post-WW2 world order. Unfortunately, at that particular time in history, most of the countries of Africa were still under colonial rule with the result that it was only Egypt, Liberia, Ethiopia and South Africa that were able to participate in the signing of the Charter of the UN Charter.
2024 is a long time from 1945 as so many previously colonialized nations have since gained independence as a consequence of the trend ironically set in motion by the United Nations, which stresses self-determination for all nations on the basis of sovereignty and equality of states as symbolized by the General Assembly where all nations, large and small, have equal opportunity to air their peculiar views and perspectives at the UN, just as we saw played out in New York last week.
With the African continent now fully liberated from colonialism, at least, in the formal sense, 50-odd additional states were added to the UN membership, which itself is a remarkable progress, judging from where the world was in 1945. It however remains a sore point that such a large number of African states do not have permanent representation at the most important policy-making organ of the UN where crucial decisions concerning global security and overall wellbeing are taken.
This non-representation is both a moral and democratic anomaly which tends to undermine the very principle upon which the UN itself is established, i.e., democratic representation. So, the question of whether or not Africa deserves to be seated at the Security Council has long become otiose and self-evident. What we should be talking about now is how many representatives should the continent have.
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The crust of my advocacy over the years which has fortunately received widespread support from empathic world leaders, including the US President, Joe Biden, who also noted that the failure to expand the UN Security Council to include Africa members “tends to distract from the noble ideals of the universal institution that a huge chunk of the world population has been kept out of the key decision-making organ. And that reality has been brought to the fore by the demand by nations of Africa and Latin America to also be included in that organ as a way of boosting its global democratic standing.”
The UN Security Council would remain institutionally and structurally inadequate in the light of the changing faces of the world if it remains an exclusive club for a few powerful nations of Europe and Asia without African and Latin American states who now have the numerical majority at the UN. In this connection, Nigeria fits the bill pretty well. In spite of the unfortunate domestic failings of Nigeria, she has done so much to advance the noble causes of the UN in many key respects that she should, without questions, be the first country from Africa to be considered for elevation to the Security Council. This has nothing to do with how rich or militarily resourced is but more about the justice and strategic calculus embedded in the case being made.
Nigeria is sufficiently representative of the African reality because of the demographic fact that for every four black persons anywhere in the world, one is statistically a Nigerian. Second, right from her inception as a sovereign entity, Nigeria has contributed both men and materials for global peacekeeping missions under the UN flag than any other African country in far-flung places like the Congo (UNOC) 1960-1964, New Guinea (UNSF) 1962-1963, a combat battalion in Tanzania in 1964, military observers during the India-Pakistan war (UNIPOM) 1965-1966 and in several other theaters of war. Strangely though, only five countries meet to decide the fate of the whole world at the Security Council but they hardly ever agree even on the most commonsensical issues due to the veto power which they arrogantly gave themselves as ‘booty” for winning the war.
Nigeria has also financially and militarily lessened the burdens of the UN at great costs to her own economic wellbeing through regional intervention mechanisms like ECOMOG formed to terminate wars and genocide in Sierra Leone, Liberia and elsewhere as a “regional Big Brother.” The world can also not forget the major roles which Nigeria played in the elimination of apartheid and colonialism in South Africa, Namibia, Angola, etc., consistent with the fundamental goals of the UN.
Strangely, only five countries (England, USA, France, Russia and China) wield the veto power with which they often selfishly decide the fate of the rest of world but, ironically, they hardly ever agree even on the most commonsensical issues due to the reckless deployment of their veto powers which they arrogantly gave themselves as “booty” after winning the war. This point was brought home by President Biden when he said recently that “We need to be able to break the gridlock that too often stymies progress and blocks consensus on the council…We need more voices and more perspectives at the table.”
There have been contrary arguments that African countries need to put their houses in order first before angling to play in the big boys’ segment of the UN system. Somehow, Nigeria comes to mind whenever this “first put your house in order” narrative is pushed out but it really goes to no issues as long as Nigeria, irrespective of her “domestic chaos,” has managed to play her part very well as far as UN obligations are concerned while some of the supposedly better governed countries are in default.
What is more, the capacity to make just and equitable decisions is not necessarily based on how wealthy and militarily powerful a nation is; it is simply a matter of individual nation’s disposition and interest holding sway. A country like Nigeria has done so much to ensure that the UN system works at critical moments whenever she is called upon and has certainly paid her dues. Therefore, she has earned her stripes, creditable enough to sit on the Security Council as a worthy representative of the Black race everywhere. The call for permanent membership for Nigeria remains valid regardless of whatever anyone may say because such self-defeating put-downs amount only to an abdication of a well-suited and manifest continental destiny.
