The participation of President Tinunbu in the just concluded Summit for a New Global Financing Pact has continued to be a talking point on social media and I wish to add my little voice to this discuss. I was a participant at the Summit under the Civil Society Forum. My participation was funded by the Paris Peace Forum.
The first day of the summit had the opening session where President Macron gave a welcome address plus good will messages from some high-profile development partners. There were six roundtable sessions where presidents were grouped with heads of development organisations, investment companies and financial institutions and that presented opportunity for issue-based discussions according to country situation, dialogue and I will add lobbying for investment. There were also side events that ran concurrently with the roundtable sessions at different rooms at Palais Brongnairt, UNESCO and OECD buildings. These were the main events for Thursday apart from the dinner for heads of states, the global festival concert and small activities that held at other locations. The second day which was Friday was for prologue, closing ceremony and press conference. Invariably, Thursday was the day of action and engagement. More importantly the six roundtable sessions and that is where my focus is on.
The six roundtable sessions were held at the auditorium of Palais Brongnairt at different times. Nigeria's session was the last at about 6pm CET. There was high anticipation from Nigerians and other African participants. Everyone wanted to hear from Nigeria's new president, after all, it was his first official summit. The subject of the session was "Ensuring more reliable, comparable information and data" and those on the table with Mr. President were: David Craig, Co-chair of the Task force on nature-related Financial Disclosures; Mark Carney, Co-chair of the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero; Mary Schapiro, Vice-chair of Global Public Policy at Bloomberg; Sabine Mauderer, Vice-chair of the Network for Greening the Financial System and Catherine McKenna, United Nations Special Envoy. Anyone in the climate finance space will know that these are heavy names in terms of investment into green infrastructure, smart cities, etc. But our (Nigeria's) president did not show up to talk to them.
Grouping presidents alongside these heavy investors was to give opportunity to the presidents to discuss emerging issues in their countries, actions they are already taking, areas they need more assistance and their strategic plans. At least, these were what I heard from the other presidents during their sessions and many of them sealed deals before leaving the summit.
To me, this was a missed opportunity for Nigeria. Summits are not for political gimmicks nor fun-fare. They are opportunities to engage and discuss real time solutions. That was what the Summit for new Global Financing Pact was about. Unfortunately, Nigeria as usual was there for paparazzi.
