Tinubu’s third consecutive UNGA absence raises fresh questions

The Presidency @NGRPresident has now confirmed that Vice President Kashim Shettima will represent Nigeria at the 81st United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in New York. Meanwhile, President Tinubu is in Paris wining and dining with Macron.

The Presidency @NGRPresident has now confirmed that Vice President Kashim Shettima will represent Nigeria at the 81st United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in New York. Meanwhile, President Tinubu is in Paris wining and dining with Macron.

That makes it three consecutive UNGA sessions — 2024, 2025 and now 2026 — at which President Bola Tinubu will not personally lead Nigeria’s delegation.

Tinubu has attended UNGA only once since becoming President on 29 May 2023: the 78th Session in September 2023. Indeed, it is a constitutional responsibility for him to represent Nigeria at the UNGA.

But why is the President of Africa’s most populous country repeatedly absent from one of the world’s most important annual gatherings of heads of state and government? What is he running away from?

And the questions become more compelling because Nigerians had earlier been told that President Tinubu was expected to attend this year’s UNGA and address the General Assembly on 23 September. It was also claimed that he would be meeting with President Trump on the sidelines. Now, at the eleventh hour, Vice President Shettima is going instead.

What changed?

This is also the final UNGA before the scheduled end of President Tinubu’s term on 29 May 2027. Yet he will once again surrender the opportunity for direct presidential engagement with world leaders at a time when Nigeria desperately needs investment, security cooperation, trade partnerships and stronger diplomatic leverage.

The administration’s wider diplomatic record deserves scrutiny as well.

In September 2023, President Tinubu recalled Nigeria’s ambassadors around the world. For roughly two and a half years, many Nigerian missions operated without substantive ambassadors, leaving chargés d’affaires and other diplomats to keep the machinery running. It was not until March 2026 that the government finally announced postings for 65 career and non-career ambassadors. Even at that, some of the Ambassador-designates are half-baked foul-mothed diplomatic liabilities!

Diplomacy is not ceremonial decoration. Ambassadors cultivate political access, defend national interests, facilitate investment, protect citizens abroad, negotiate agreements and keep Nigeria continuously represented at the highest levels.

We cannot aspire to continental leadership while treating diplomacy as an afterthought.

And now there is an additional question.

Curiously, since Donald Trump returned to the White House in January 2025, President Tinubu has not personally attended UNGA. Given the earlier indication that Tinubu would attend this year’s meeting and the subsequent change of plan, Nigerians are entitled to ask for an explanation.

Why did the President change his plans? Why will he not personally attend UNGA?

Was any bilateral engagement with President Trump sought or scheduled? Was any such meeting declined or abandoned?vAre there diplomatic, political, security or other considerations behind the decision?

The Presidency should simply tell Nigerians.

The office of President belongs to the Nigerian people. When the country’s international representation changes suddenly on the eve of the world’s most important diplomatic gathering, asking “Why?” is not hostility. It is accountability.