COP28: LP Chair calls FG’s huge delegation insensitive

The National Chairman of the Labour Party, Julius Abure, on Saturday, said the controversy that trailed the huge delegation Nigeria took to the Climate Change Conference in the United Arab Emirates has shown that President Bola Tinubu is not ready to learn from the mistakes of the previous administration.

Abure raised the concern while receiving an award of excellence from the Benin chapter of the Nigerian Bar Association. The Federal Government received knocks recently following the revelation that it took a delegation of 1,411 to COP28.

The FG, through the Minister of Information, Mohammed Idris, however, said that it only funded 422 persons to the event.

But Abure said in a country where people are struggling with poverty and the current minimum wage is still being debated, it is insensitive of Tinubu’s government to embark on such a ‘jamboree.’

He said, “It is obvious that the government of President Tinubu and the APC are not willing to depart from the circumstances that have plunged the nation into economic quagmire in the past.

“How can a country that is borrowing money to pay workers’ wages, a country plagued by insecurity, battered by power collapse where investors are exiting the country by the day fritter away such a humongous amount of resources on a jamboree?

“A sober government should have known that borrowing money to attend conferences while rich nations attended the same event with less than 20 persons bothered on insensitivity and brazen impunity. Nigerians have made their point and they are aware that the nation’s salvation lies with the Labour Party as we approach subsequent elections.”