President Bola Tinubu did not attend a live economic session at the ongoing World Leaders Summit in Paris.
Instead, Tinubu delegated the country’s ambassador to represent him. It was unclear why Mr. Tinubu couldn’t go on stage by himself, especially as his office had earlier declared that he was in France to attend the summit and participate in a debate about Africa’s economic prospects.
The New Global Financing Pact Summit is a two-day event at Palais Brongniart in Paris, and organizers say it aims to develop effective solutions to reduce poverty and the negative consequences of climate change on the world’s financial system.
With his aides stating he was completely prepared for the event which was his first since taking office on May 29, Tinubu was scheduled to go on stage with other participants at 6:00 p.m. on Thursday, June 22, 2023.
However, Tinubu who failed to join other participants, delegated the role to Nigerian ambassador Adamu Ahmed, who was on stage with 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 global public policy at Bloomberg; Sabine Mauderer of the Network for Greening the Financial System; and United Nations special envoy Catherine Mckenna.
Ahmed, in an impromptu speech, said: “We believe we’ve got 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 Macron, who has brought the issue of poverty to the table. This summit is about climate, people, and diversity.
Ahmed, in an impromptu 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 Macron who 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 Macron to 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 to France was Mr. Tinubu’s first trip abroad since becoming Nigeria’s president on May 29.
At the time of filing this report, it was not immediately clear why he could not participate in the most important aspect of the summit for which he left the country.
Among the other African leaders at the event is Cyril Ramaphosa, President of South Africa.
