Toba Owojaiye reporting
Benin City, Edo State
Vice President Kashim Shettima’s appeal at the 79th United Nations General Assembly offers a hopeful prospect for Nigeria and other developing nations.
Truth Live News gathered that his call for debt forgiveness, if heeded, could open the door to significant economic relief, allowing Nigeria to redirect resources toward critical areas like infrastructure, education, and healthcare. This, in turn, would create more opportunities at home, reducing the need for Nigerians to migrate to Europe or other first-world countries in search of better livelihoods.
Moreover, easing the debt burden would free up resources to address the root causes of insecurity, including poverty and unemployment, which often fuel terrorism and instability. A more economically stable Nigeria could play a larger role in fostering peace and development in the region.
In a statement from Stanley Nkwocha, the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Communications, the Nigerian presidency also addressed trade barriers, protectionist policies, and fierce competition that threaten global investments.
“Countries of the global South cannot make meaningful economic progress without special concessions and a review of their current debt burden,” he stated.
By working together through multilateral cooperation, as Shettima urged, global leaders can take meaningful steps to uplift the Global South, potentially leading to greater prosperity, reduced migration pressures, and a more secure world.
He added, “Today, these pillars of our organisation are threatened. They risk being broken by the relentless pursuit of individual national priorities rather than the collective needs of the nations that are assembled here today.
“While commitment to multilateralism offers us the surest guarantee of global action to address the existential challenges we face, singularity and nationalism are undermining the aspirations towards the peaceful and collective resolution of such challenges.
“From last year’s summit, and indeed from previous years, we have carried over the numerous challenges of terrorism, armed conflict, inequality, poverty, racial discrimination, human rights abuses, food crises, hunger, irregular migration, piracy, global pandemics, hyper-inflation, nuclear proliferation, grinding debt burden, climate change, and a host of other vexations.
“The continued manifestation of these challenges testifies to our failings rather than to any lofty achievements on our part. Billions of dollars are being committed to the prosecution of wars and the fanning of the embers of conflict,” he said.