President Bola Tinubu on Thursday reportedly did not participate in a live economic discussion at the current world leaders’ summit in Paris.
According to Peoples Gazette, Tinubu instead delegated the country’s ambassador to represent him.
The reason for Tinubu’s absence from the stage remains unclear, as his office had previously announced his presence in France to attend the summit and discuss Africa’s economic future.
The summit, a two-day event taking place at Palais Brongniart in Paris, is designed to explore efficient ways to combat poverty and the negative impacts of climate change on the global financial system.
Tinubu was expected to join the debate at 6:00 p.m. local time (7:00 p.m. Nigerian time) on Thursday. His team had indicated he was ready for this appearance, his first since taking office as president on May 29.
In Tinubu’s stead, Nigerian Ambassador, Adamu Ahmed participated in the event, sharing the stage with notable figures like David Craig, co-chair of the Task Force on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD); Mark Carney of the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ); Mary Schapiro of Bloomberg Global Public Policy; Sabine Mauderer of the Network for Greening the Financial System; and Catherine Mckenna, a United Nations special envoy.
Ahmed, while reading a prepared speech, said, “We believe we’ve more pressing social issues in Africa. The argument has been that world leaders should elevate social issues just like environmental issues. I must commend President Macronwho has brought the issue of poverty to the table. This summit is about climate, people and diversity.
“The severe financial and economic crisis that African countries found themselves in after COVID-19 is all over. There are economic difficulties, and we’ve all realized that public resources would no longer solve the problem, we need to track private capital and for us to track the capital, and we need to compete with other countries around the world.
“It is no longer business as usual for African countries, we now need to join the discourse. We need to compete with the rest of the world. We welcome the idea of President Macronto develop Net-Zero Data Public Utility (NZDPU) because we feel it is an open free repository that will greatly help African countries.
“The message from the African continent is that we are on board, we want to join the international community. We are now seeing movement from mere commitment to concrete transition plans.
“For example, in Nigeria, we enacted the Climate Change Act in 2021 which enables us to establish the Climate Change Council in which the president (Tinubu) is the head. It enables us to establish a climate change fund and National Action Plan on climate change which clearly reels our road map to the net zero target. We put our target to 2060 because we are aware of the enormous challenges we are confronting. We have tried to form regional partnerships as African countries.”
The trip was Tinubu’s first abroad since becoming Nigeria’s president on May 29.
