Recently updated on October 24th, 2022 at 03:48 pm
Nigeria has won a re-election into the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Geneva for the 2018 to 2020 term at an election held at the UN Headquarters in New York.
According to the Ambassador/Deputy Permanent Representative of Nigeria to the UN, Ambassador Samson Itegboje:
“There were two slots for West Africa in the election and Ghana and Sierra Leone were also contesting.
However, we reached an understanding that West African countries could not be antagonising themselves and that we have to reach a compromise.
So we got Ghana and Sierra Leone to step down for Nigeria. But even at that, there were a lot of reach out we had to do beyond West Africa.
So this election has once again showed that Nigeria enjoyed a lot of goodwill not only among its West African bloc countries but also in Africa and across the world”.
The UNHRC is a United Nations system inter-governmental body responsible for promoting and protecting human rights around the world.
With the re-election, Nigeria, currently serving out its 2015 to 2017 term, would be among the four countries representing West Africa and the 13 countries representing Africa in the 47-seat Council.
The other two countries on the council with Nigeria are Cote d’ Ivoire and Togo, which tenure expire in 2018.
Ghana and Nigeria are already serving out their tenure for the 2015 to 2017 term while Ghana, which initially sought the-election like Nigeria, stepped down for Nigeria to get on board of the Council.
