Nigeria’s 1,411 delegation to the COP28 ongoing in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, is the highest ever, according to a statistics company, StatiSense.
President Bola Tinubu has come under attacks for profligacy at a time when the same government is complaining about inheriting a bankrupt economy from former president Muhammadu Buhari.
With a federal debt of N78.2 trillion (Q2 2023) and a debt-to-GDP ratio of 38.4 per cent, economists have been telling the government to cut down on spending.
The 2024 appropriation bill, presented to the National Assembly on 29 November, has 30 per cent of the N27.5 trillion budget estimate projected for debt servicing.
The estimated debt service of N8.25 trillion is 45 per cent of the expected total revenue and nearly matches the capital expenditure plan of N8.7 trillion.
Nigeria’s 1,411 delegation to COP28 equals that of China and is only outnumbered by Brazil’s 3,081 delegates.
The government has, however, clarified that the total number of delegates enjoying government sponsorship is 422.
According to the statistics made available by StatiSense, the federal government delegation is still larger than any delegation of Nigerians to any Convention of Parties before 2023.
The highest before now was the country’s delegation to COP27 in Egypt in 2022, which was 120 delegates.
That was a 33-person increase from the 87 Nigerian delegates to COP26 in the United Kingdom in 2021.
The Convention of Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is the world’s most important climate change conference.
World leaders, public and private sector decision-makers, climate activists, multilateral agencies, and the media gather in a select city every year to address global climate change and its impacts.
