The Special Adviser on Media and Publicity to the President, Femi Adesina, has offered reasons why President Muhammadu Buhari was absent at one of the events of the ongoing United Nations General Assembly, where Nigeria was scheduled to be present.
The meeting, which was held on Friday, was called to seek help for millions of people in the Lake Chad Basin region forced to flee the violence of Boko Haram and who are hit with repeated droughts and floods that have brought malnutrition and disease.
“While the radical Islamist militants operate out of Nigeria and UN aid chief Stephen O’Brien said that is where most people have been displaced by their attacks, Nigeria did not send anyone to the United Nations event,” Reuters reported on Saturday morning.
Reuters said officials of the UN who convened the meeting expressed disappointment at Nigeria’s absence.
But Adesina, in a telephone interview from the venue of the ongoing UNGA, told The Eagle Online that Buhari and the Nigerian delegation were involved in another crucial meeting.
Adesina told The Eagle Online: “Yesterday’s meeting was a side meeting.
“Not that it was not important.
“But we were in a more important meeting.
“The UNGA has several side meetings and there is no way a country can attend all the meetings.
“More so, there is another more crucial one on Boko Haram that is coming up today.
“That, we cannot miss.
“But the one that took place on Friday clashed with another more important meeting.
“And we just could not be there.
“We count all meetings as important, but like all other countries, we cannot attend all the meetings.”
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