Ajuri Ngelale, special presidential envoy on climate action, says President Bola Tinubu recently cancelled an agreement to pay a consultant 15 percent of all climate change-related grants and donations.
Speaking on Wednesday on Sunrise Daily — a Channels
Television programme — Ngelale said the Tinubu administration met the agreement
in place.
“I’m going to break a little bit of news this morning by
informing our people that when we came into this office, we found that there
was an agreement within one of the climate institutions that essentially
stipulated that a friend of some government at some point would collect 15
percent of all grants and donations payable to the Federal Republic of Nigeria
on the basis of almost no work done. That is the level of rot,” he said.
“This is related to all the platforms of all the various climate-related activities of the government. Someone was able to get an agreement.
“Fortunately for us,
very little damage was done in terms of monies paid to this person. So we were
able to find that not much has been paid to this person because we caught it
early.
“But if we had not caught it when we caught it, if we had
not come in when we came in, the damage could have been incalculable because
you’re dealing with potentially billions of dollars over the course of time
that will come into this sector as a result of the work that’s going on.
“We were able to come in and that agreement has been
cancelled. The president was made aware of it. I brought it to his attention
and there’s really a lot going on in these spaces where people always look at
oil and gas, telecoms, financial services regulation, CBN, NPA and many of
these other big tax collection agencies.”
Ngelale said on his watch as presidential envoy on climate
change, wasteful expenditure around sub-contracting and consultancy would no
longer be the order of the day.
He said the malaise of “special interests” was responsible
for Nigeria’s bloated delegations at previous climate change conferences.
‘FG WON’T DECELERATE INVESTMENT IN OIL, GAS’
Ngelale, who doubles as the president’s special adviser on
media and publicity, said Nigeria would not decelerate investments in oil and
gas on the basis of a “clean energy” pursuit.
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He said the Tinubu administration will pursue a “dual track”
of “clean offshore energy” and renewables, adding that “we are not going to be
myopic”.
“One of the major problems is that we do have energy poverty
in the country. And we can’t align with anyone who is saying decelerate
investment in energy sourcing that is pivotal to the present and future of the
Nigerian economy,” he said.
“We will not sign up to anything that has to do with
deceleration in gas investment in particular… particularly when you understand
that emissions from the oil and gas sector in our country contribute such an
insignificant portion of global emissions. That is not even a serious
conversation to be had.”
On Tuesday, Ngelale said the presidency has decided to slash
the budget for COP29 — the next climate change conference — by N10 billion.
Last year, Nigeria had 1,411 delegates at the COP28 in Dubai.
The size of the Nigerian delegation sparked outrage amid a
rhetoric of fiscal discipline from government.
Ngelale said an audit revealed unnecessary spending and
attendees who “had no business” at the conference.
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