Vice President Shettima has held a bilateral meeting with the Prime Minister of St. Kitts and Nevis, Dr Terrance Drew, where they recommitted to strengthening economic and cultural ties.
VP Shettima assured Drew of President Bola Tinubu’s determination to rekindle friendship and brotherhood between both nations.
He said, “Going forward, we should have robust engagement and understanding. We should stand by each other.
“We should stand for one another. We should support each other’s interests.
“For St. Kitts and Nevis, and Nigeria, what binds us together supersedes whatever divides us. The majority of the population of the Caribbean is of African descent. A large chunk of them are English-speaking countries. Quite a number of them belong to the Commonwealth. So, the commonalities we share are so significant, but contact has been low, relative to what it ought to be.”
VP Shettima emphasised the willingness of Nigeria to resurrect her relationship with the Carribiean nation.
“So, your Excellency, I want to assure you that my boss is very keen on rekindling that friendship, that sense of brotherhood and sisterhood, and see to it that going forward, we should have robust engagement and understanding,” he said.
VP Shettima further recalled that President Tinubu was in Saint Lucia earlier in the year, as part of his broader package of reaching out to Caribbean-Africans in the diaspora.
For his part, Dr Drew, who decried the low level of trade and contact between Caribbean countries and Africa, expressed the country’s readiness to work closely with Nigeria to boost trade on the African continent.
PIAK