COP28: Tinubu Will Sack Officials ‘Hanging Around Hotels’ In Dubai — Presidency

The presidency has said any appointee found to have travelled to Dubai for the ongoing UN Climate Change Conference (COP2) without justification will be sacked by President Bola Tinubu.

Tinubu had sternly warned appointees not to travel to COP28 as delegates unless they had an “articulated program of participation,” said Chief Ajuri Ngelale, the president’s media adviser.

He said Tinubu made clear at a cabinet meeting that any official who travelled just to “hang around hotels” would be sanctioned or fired.

Ngelale reiterated his principal’s warning amid questions over the size of Nigeria’s delegation to the climate summit.

“Before we left for Dubai COP28, the Monday before we left at the Federal Executive Council meeting, today’s the end of the meeting, President Bola Tinubu turned on his microphone and he said to everybody in the room including myself that he has issued a prior warning to the entire executive leadership across the Federal government of Nigeria, that if you do not have any business to conduct on behalf of the Federal government of Nigeria in any of these major summits, you have no business using taxpayers money to finance your trip and logistics to that location,” Ngelale told TVC.

“Before UNGA, the UN General Assembly in September, we issued a statement from the presidency where the President made it very clear that not only was he massively pruning down the numbers that has initially been presented to him with respect to the Federal delegation to UNGA but he also issued a warning at that if anybody going on these trips who has no business going on these trips, they will be sanctioned. That was September. Fast word to the Monday before we left for COP28, the President said it again.

“He said that this time, I am issuing to all of you a final warning, anybody that is going to these trips to just hang around hotels or convention centers, with no articulated programme of participation at COP28, if I find out that this is what it is, I am telling you today that your jobs are on the line’. This is what he said days before we went to COP28. It was never made public. I am making it public now.”

While the government had said it sponsored only 422 out of 1,411 Nigerian participants, some critics have argued that the taxpayer-funded contingent was still large.

Delegates directly sponsored by the government include representatives from the ministries, presidency, vice president’s office, parliament and federal agencies.

Information Minister Mohammed Idris said the remaining participants were likely sponsored by “non-government entities” like companies, NGOs and academia.

With Tinubu’s promise of punishment, government attendees may need to show their trips to Dubai involved substantive climate commitments, not just networking or lobbying.