President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu was on Sunday tasked to disclose how much the sponsorship of delegates attending the ongoing COP28 in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) gulped, just as it was described as a waste of scarce resources.
While the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) demanded that Tinubu should tell Nigerians exactly how much was spent sponsoring the delegation, Sir Peter Obi, Labour Party presidential candidate in the 2023 polls, described the development as a waste of scarce resources.
A list published by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC), revealed that Nigeria has 1,411 participants out of 81,027 delegates registered to attend the summit in person, the third-highest number, alongside China.
The participants’ list showed that Nigeria also has the highest number of registered delegates from Africa.
Some of the Nigerian delegates are ministers, governors, special advisers to the president, and other chieftains of the All Progressives Congress (APC).
The Federal Government has come under criticism over the participants’ list with many Nigerians condenming the sponsorship of delegates to the conference with taxpayers’ money.
Debo Ologunagba, PDP spokesperson, in a statement on Sunday, said the Tinubu’s administration was “wasteful, frivolous and reckless in the application of the scarce resources of the nation”.
The opposition party accused the president of adding the names of his “cronies, mistresses and other hangers-on associated with the presidency” to the delegates’ list.
Read the statement: “Our party challenges the Presidency to come clean by making public the names of the official delegation sponsored by the Federal Government to the Conference, the relevance of such individuals to the Conference and the total cost of such sponsorship on the nation.
“Of course, Nigerians have the list and they know the genuine officials of sub-national governments and other self-sponsored entities at the Conference.
“The PDP calls on the National Assembly, pursuant to its constitutional duty under Section 88 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 (as amended) which empowers it to investigate and expose corruption by any organ of government, to immediately commence investigation into this embarrassing revelation and impose appropriate sanction on anyone or Institution found culpable in that regard.
“Our party also demands that President Tinubu should be ready to refund any Federal Government funds improperly spent to sponsor any individual who has no relevance at the conference.
“Such funds should be channelled to projects that have direct bearing on the wellbeing of Nigerians”.
In a related development, Sir Peter Obi, presidential candidate of the LP, said the number of Nigeria’s delegates at the ongoing COP28 was a waste of scarce resources.
Obi on Sunday, expressed his misgivings about the number of delegates representing Nigeria at the climate change conference on his official X account.
Congratulating Nigeria for matching China’s number of contingents, Obi described the situation as a “twist of sad irony” owing to China’s unmatched financial advantage over Nigeria.
Wrote Obi on X: “In a twist of sad irony, let me congratulate the giant of Africa, Nigeria, for matching the great China, with the same number of contingents at the ongoing COP28 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Nigeria’s contingent to COP28 totalled 1,411, the same number as the Chinese contingents.
“While China’s budget for 2024 is about $4 trillion, about $2,860 per head; Nigeria’s budget is about $33 billion, about $165 per head. China has a high Human Development Index, HDI, with a ranking of 79 out of 191 countries measured, and Nigeria has a low HDI, with a ranking of 163 out of 191 countries measured.
“Nigeria has more people living in ‘multi-dimensional’ poverty than China, despite China having seven times our population”.
“Most importantly, the vast majority of those in the Nigerian delegation to COP28 are either non-relevant civil servants or relations, friends and hangers-on of high government officials. Most of them hardly understand or have anything to do with Climate Change”.
The former Anambra State governor said the huge number of delegates banking on public expense came at a time citizens could hardly afford food and basic needs as a result of economic hardship.
Said he: “I pray earnestly that a day will come soon enough when we can focus on competing with China on productivity and the miracle of migrating the highest number of its citizens out of poverty over a relatively short time.
“As we have kept emphasising, we must stop waste as a tradition of our government and nation. We urgently need to cut the cost of governance and invest in production.
“We need to de-emphasise unnecessary ceremony and showmanship as a mode of government behaviour. We need to tie spending to necessity and national Priority. A New Nigeria is possible. We only need to do the reasonable and the necessary”.
Apart from government officials, staff of Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) and celebrities are among those who registered to attend the annual climate change conference.
