The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Yusuf Tuggar has said despite the recent condolence message to Russian on Moscow attack, the country’s criticism of Russian aggression on Ukraine still remains unchanged.

The minister made this clarification when he hosted members of the diplomatic correspondents in Abuja on Thursday.

He told journalists that Nigeria addresses issues on its merit and that the condolence message to the Russian government was not out of place and not in contradiction of any earlier held positions.

He said despite condoling with the Russian government over the attack that killed over 140 people, Nigeria still maintained her position of condemning the invasion of Ukraine by Russia.

He said: “Nigeria has been consistent in terms of even when we had a bipolar world, we were non-aligned, we were neither with the US nor the Soviet bloc at the time.

“We dealt with both sides. We are equal opportunity aligners, we are aligned with the interests of Nigeria and we will continue to do so.

“This is why we continue to emphasize today on strategic autonomy and that’s the new name for non-alignment since we no longer have those two blocs, you no longer have a bipolar world.

“With the structure that you have now, it is a multipolar world. We align with whatever benefits Nigeria.”

He said: “The tradition of condoling with countries when they have such unfortunate incidents continues. It’s not new. And Russia is not an enemy.”

The Minister maintained hat there has always been a relationship with Russia since the Soviet and Cold War eras, stressing that the Ajaokuta Steel Complex was built by the Soviet Union at the time.

He said: “Our position on violation of territorial integrity of countries remains the same, it remains consistent, we condemned the violation of Ukraine’s territorial space when it occurred but it does not mean that because of that, we will stop dealing with Russia.

“We will continue to deal with Ukraine, the same way we’re dealing with other countries and whenever something happens to them, whenever there is any misfortune, we will commiserate with them, the same way that they commiserate with us,” Tuggar added.

He insisted that: “The tradition of condoling with countries when they have such unfortunate incidents continues. It’s not new. And Russia is not an enemy.”