Former presidential candidate, Moghalu, gets UN job

EX-PRESIDENTIAL candidate and former Central Bank deputy governor, Prof. Kingsley Moghalu, has been elected member of Board of Directors of the Academic Council on the United Nations System (ACUNS).

The ACUNS is an independent, global non-profit organisation of scholars and practitioners, which was established in 1987 to stimulate and support research and teaching on the role of the United Nations system in international relations.

The development was disclosed in a statement on Tuesday by Moghalu, who was a presidential candidate in the 2019 general election and again recently announced his intention to run for presidency in 2023.

According to the former apex bank deputy governor, the news of his election was conveyed in a letter by Dr Lise Morjé Howard, President of ACUNS and Professor of Government and Foreign Service at Georgetown University in Washington DC.

“On behalf of the Board of Directors of the Academic Council on the United Nations System, I write with the news that the ACUNS Nominations Committee and Board of Directors have each voted unanimously to accept your nomination to join ACUNS as a Director, for the period June 2021 – June 2025,” Moghalu quoted Howard as saying in the letter.

Moghalu, in his reaction to the development, said: “I am greatly honored to have been elected to the Board of Directors of ACUNS.

“I look forward to contributing to the corporate governance and the substantive work of this distinguished global network.

“That is to help shape the global thinking on how the UN system can adapt to the contemporary global environment and continue to be useful to its nearly 200 member countries.”

He added that that he, along with Maria Espinosa, former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ecuador and President of the 73rd Session of the UN General Assembly, would also be Keynote Speaker in the first plenary session of the upcoming ACUNS Annual Meeting on June 24.

According to him, he would speak on the theme of the session: “Change and Inclusion in the Time of COVID”.

Moghalu served as the Special Envoy of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) on Post-COVID -19 Development Finance for Africa, from December 2020 to June 2021.

He previously served as Professor of Public Policy at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in Massachusetts, USA after his five-year tenure as CBN Deputy Governor from 2009 to 2014.

During his time at the apex bank, Moghalu led the implementation of far-reaching reforms in the banking and payment systems including the introduction of the Bank Verification Number (BVN).

He previously worked for the United Nations for 17 years, rising from entry level to the highest career bracket of director.

ACUNS is headquartered in New York and currently has 30 institutional members and 450 individual members in 55 countries and is governed by an international board of directors.