FG Says Ministers Didn’t Attend U.S Investment Summit Because They Weren’t Invited

The Federal Government has said the news making the rounds that Ministers who were invited to the US-Nigeria Investment Summit in Washington, DC, on April 19, 2018 shunned the forum is untrue.

Speaking through a statement from London on Monday, the Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, added that most of the Ministers “slated to attend the event were not invited and were not in Washington at the time.”

According to him, the insinuation that some Ministers “collected estacodes without attending the forum is baseless.”

He said the Ministers of Agriculture,Audu Ogbe; Power, Works and Housing,Babatunde Fashola, and Budget and National Planning, Udoma Udo Udoma, did not get any invitation from the organizers, even though they were listed among those who were expected to attend.

The information Minister said his Industry, Trade and Investment counterpart, Okechukwu Enelama, who was invited, was with the President at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in London at the time of the summit.

The Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun, who was in Washington at the time, he said, was
there purposely to attend the 2018 Spring Meetings of the World Bank
and the International Monetary Fund.

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Mohammed said though he was invited to
the forum, he wrote back to inform the organizers that he would not be
able to make the trip due to conflicting schedules.

”It is clear from the foregoing that no Minister shunned the US-Investment Summit and that the reports being circulated in that regard are bereft of facts,” the Minister said.

Nigerians have reacted angrily over the report in the media that the Ministers shunned an important meeting that should showcase the nation’s economic potentials to foreign investors waiting to interact with the Nigerian government officials.

A former Senior Special Assistant on Public Affairs to former President Goodluck Jonathan, Doyin Okupe reacted to the development that what government officials normally do while on foreign trip is shopping spree at the expense of other things.

Tweeting Monday morning,Okupe said: Officials Ministers absent @ investors forum in DC”…..HRH Sanusi Nothing new Sir. Its a Nigerian thing. On landing, its shopping straight. its also not limited to public sector. Executives from private sector also…”

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