Nigeria’s Mohammad-Bande Elected UN President

Nigeria’s Professor Tijjani Mohammad-Bande was on Tuesday elected as the President of the 74th session of the United Nations General Assembly.

As president of the General Assembly, Prof. Mohammed-Bande will serve for one year beginning in September, 2019.

The period is significant as it would include the commemoration of the 75^th anniversary of the United Nations and important meetings including the Climate Action Summit and the Sustainable Development Goals Summit, and the high-level meetings on universal health coverage, Small Island developing states and financing for sustainable .

He was immediately congratulated by United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

“It is my pleasure to congratulate Professor Tijjani Mohammad-Bande as President of the 74th session of the United Nations General Assembly. From your years as Permanent Representative of Nigeria, you know the United Nations well.”

The Secretary General said, “As a Nigerian and an African, you have invaluable insights into the continent’s challenges – such as the Sahel and Lake Chad basin – and more broadly into the challenges our world faces across the three pillars of our work, peace, sustainable development and human rights.”

Professor Tijjani Muhammad-Bande has had an outstanding career as a scholar and diplomat. He received a B.Sc (Political Science) from Ahmadu Bello University, Nigeria (1979); MA (Political Science), Boston University, USA (1981); and Ph.D (Political Science), University of Toronto, Canada (1987).

He started at Usmanu Danfodiyo University, Sokoto, Nigeria, rising from Graduate Assistant in 1980 to full Professor in 1998, and ultimately to Vice-Chancellor, in 2004, a position he held for five years. Between 2000 and 2004, he served as the Director-General of  Le Centre Africain de Formation et de Recherche Administratives pour le Dèveloppement (CAFRAD), in Tangier, Morocco.

From 2010 to 2016, Professor Muhammad-Bande held the position of Director-General of Nigeria’s National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies, Nigeria’ most reputable policy institution for training leaders from the public and private sectors, including high echelon officials of Nigeria’s Armed Forces.

As Nigeria’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, he worked with colleagues from all regions of the world to achieve common objectives. He served as the Vice-President of the General Assembly during the 71st session and remains active in several fora, including as Chair of the United Nations Special Committee on Peacekeeping Operations (C34), Member, Advisory Board of the United Nations Counter-Terrorism Centre and Chair of the ECOWAS Group (2018-2019).

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