Credit: Gary Raynaldo /  Tijjani Muhammad-Bande, President of the United Nations General Assembly, at press briefing at UN world headquarters in New York Oct. 1, 2019.

By Gary Raynaldo   DIPLOMATIC  TIMES

UNITED NATIONS –  NEW YORK –  The new President of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) Tijjani Muhammad-Bande Tuesday laid out his priorities for his year-long tenure on the Seventy-Fourth session during  a press conference.   Muhammad-Bande  succeeds Ecuador’s Maria Fernanda Espinosa as UNGA president.  Peace,  security, poverty eradication, climate action,   as well as gender parity will be Muhammad-Bande’s priorities during his UNGA presidency.  He also pledged to foster multilateralism in solving global problems.  By contrast, U.S. President Trump pushed nationalism over globalism in his UNGA speech last week, and has been a fervent advocate of a unilateralist approach to solving world issues. 

“It is clear that solving the problems we face today, can only happen through multilateral efforts. We are all guardians of the UN Charter. The hope is to find ways to reduce differences, to find consensus.”

-Tijjani Muhammad-Bande, President of the United Nations General Assembly

Between 2010 and 2016,  Mohammad Bande was Director-General of the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies, Nigeria’s most reputable policy institution for training leaders from the public and private sectors, including high-echelon officers of the armed forces.   From 2000 until 2004, Mr. Mohammad Bande was Director-General of Le Centre Africain de Formation et de Recherche Administratives pour le Développement (CAFRAD), in Tangier, Morocco.   Having begun his academic career at Usmanu Danfodiyo University, Nigeria,  Muhammad Bande rose from Graduate Assistant in 1980, to full Professor in 1998 and ultimately to Vice-Chancellor in 2004, a position he held for five years.  During his tenure, the institution ranked first among Nigerian universities in the accreditation of academic programmes (2007).  He earned a Bachelor of Science, a Master of Arts and a PhD in political science from Ahmadu Bello University in Nigeria, Boston University in the United States and the University of Toronto in Canada (1987), respectively  Muhammad Bande is married and has four children.  His hobbies include swimming, soccer, field hockey, farming and music.