By Kamil Opeyemi
Defeated presidential candidate of the Labour Party in the 2023 general election, Mr. Peter Obi, has said Nigeria, with its alleged depressing state of the economy, cannot afford to have as many as 1,411 delegates attending the ongoing climate change summit in Dubai.
NPO Reported earlier that Nigeria has same 1,411 delegates as China while Brazil has over 3,000 delegates at the same conference.
There have been outrage as government critics say it is waste of tax payers’ money to have that number. Reacting on Sunday, Obi said Nigeria’s economic indices, when placed side by side China, shows acute poverty, adding that having the same number of citizens travelling for the event amount to waste of funds.
“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 totaled 1411, 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,” Obi said in his tweet on X Sunday.
Going further, he said 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.
“This huge contingent is out at public expense at a time when most Nigerians can hardly afford food and basic needs as a result of economic hardship. 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 emphasizing, we must stop waste as a a tradition of our government and nation. We urgently need to cut the cost of governance and invest in production.”
Obi stated He said Nigeria needs to de-emphasize what he called “unnecessary ceremony and showmanship as a mode of government behaviour” adding that the government needs to tie spending to necessity and national Priority.
“A New Nigeria is possible. We only need to do the reasonable and the necessary,” he said