Former Governor of Anambra State, Peter Obi has attacked President Bola Ahmed Tinubu for sponsoring 1,411 delegates to the COP28 Climate Change.
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Obi said 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.
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He stated that China has a high Human Development Index, HDI, with a ranking of 79 out of 191 countries measured, and that 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.“Most importantly, 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,” he said.According to Obi, “We need to de-emphasize unnecessary ceremony and showmanship as a mode of government behaviour.“We need to tie spending to necessity and national Priority. A New Nigeria is possible. We only need to do the reasonable and the necessary.”
