Nigeria’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Yusuf Tuggar, disclosed to the media that Nigeria is looking to send in its application to join an intergovernmental organization, the BRICS group.
Very recently Tuggar restated that the country has not abandoned its objective to be a part of the BRICS group in the next two years.
“We intend to do it. Like I said before, Nigeria runs a deliberative democratic system. So there tends to be a lot of engagement with different interest groups, different internal bodies before such an action is taken,” Tuggar said.
BRICS countries include major world powers, such as China and Russia, and countries like Brazil, India, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates which are influential on their continents.
The expanded group is said to have a combined population of about 3.5 billion, or 45% of the world’s inhabitants.
The group was designed to bring together the world’s most important developing countries, to challenge the political and economic power of the wealthier nations of North America and Western Europe.
What this move means is that if Nigeria eventually becomes a member of BRICS, the West African country would be trading its major exporting product which is oil in Naira.
In February, human rights lawyer, Femi Falana, SAN, stated that trading crude oil in Naira would not only boost the currency’s value but also reduce dependence on foreign exchange.
Photo: DD News