TheCable

Kemi Adeosun, minister of finance, and Godwin Emefiele, governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, have said they did not confirm attendance at the US-Nigeria Investors Summit held in Washington, DC on Saturday.

Explaining the reason for their absence at the event, both said the meeting was not included in their schedule.

“I attend the IMFC which is the highest decision-making body of the IMF. My primary role here as well as having the Nigerian hat on is to represent 23 African countries. So one of the things I have to do is to issue a statement on behalf of those 23 which includes most of the Anglophone countries: South Africa, Mozambique,” Adeosun said on Sunday.

“There has been some controversy over the scheduling I wasn’t due at any event. I was here as a governor of the IMF and member of IMFC to represent the 23 African countries and that schedule is what I must adhere to. I think maybe there were some scheduling challenges there.”

On his part, Emefiele said a plenary session of IMF finance ministers and central bank governors was holding at the same time of the event.

“The minister of finance and for me being the governor of the CBN what takes preeminence is the meetings in the IMF as well as the meeting at the World Bank,” he said.

“Being the governor of the CBN what takes preeminence is the meetings in the IMF as well as the meeting at the World Bank. I think it is important for me to say this when I arrived in Washington, the officials of the embassy spoke with me that there was going to be a US-Nigeria summit and I said will check my schedule because I wasn’t consulted when this summit was being organised.

“What one would have expected is that they would have checked my schedule and that of the finance minister if they thought that our presence at the summit was very necessary.

“The US Nigeria summit was meant to hold between 2pm and 3pm whereas the World Bank development committed plenary session which is an assembly of ministers and governors of central banks was to hold between 2pm and 5pm. There was no way how the minister of finance and myself could have been at those meetings.

“We are not irresponsible people and please we apologise to those investors who had gathered at the Nigerian embassy for the summit. My apologies but I know we also held some side meetings with some investors and there will always be lots of opportunities to meet with them.”

Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, emir of Kano, had berated ministers for being absent the investors’ summit which held on Saturday at the Nigerian Embassy in Washington DC.

Most of the ministers invited were in London, UK, for other official events.

“They put my name on the programme without my consent,” a minister told TheCable.