Vice President Kashim Shettima has reaffirmed Nigeria’s commitment to deepening its strategic relationship with the Republic of Benin, describing the two countries as essentially one people tied by centuries of shared history, culture, family, and economic interdependence that no political boundary had been able to diminish.

Shettima delivered the remarks in Cotonou after representing President Bola Tinubu at the inauguration of President Romuald Wadagni, whose seven-year constitutional term begins with Nigeria as his country’s most consequential neighbor.

He said the Tinubu administration viewed the Nigeria-Benin relationship as strategic to regional integration and democratic stability within West Africa, and that Nigeria’s presence at the inauguration reflected the president’s enduring commitment to solidarity and cooperation with neighboring states.

He highlighted the depth of the relationship in concrete terms: a shared border stretching nearly 600 kilometres across six Nigerian states, approximately five million Nigerians residing in Benin Republic out of its estimated population of 15 million, bilateral trade that currently hovers around two billion dollars annually, and overlapping communities on both sides of the border that intermarry and share cultural identity.

He noted that Benin has a Borgu Province while Nigeria has a Borgu Local Government Area in Niger State, and that Yoruba communities existed on both sides of the border. He said this was not coincidence but shared heritage, and that it bound both countries to a common destiny that demanded active cooperation rather than passive coexistence.

Shettima said both nations had deepened cooperation in border security, trade facilitation, grassroots governance, and infrastructure development as part of broader ECOWAS integration efforts. He recalled that in August 2025, Nigeria and Benin formalized grassroots cooperation through a memorandum of understanding aimed at strengthening collaboration among local governments, traditional rulers, and border communities to tackle cross-border crime and improve socioeconomic ties. That arrangement had since contributed to improvements in commercial activity, agriculture, infrastructure, and local security coordination along the border.