Tinubu Misses COP31 Leaders’ Summit For Third Year Running

President Bola Tinubu has not attended the Antalya Leaders’ Summit on the thirty first United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP31) in Türkiye, extending his absence from the high-level local weather gathering to a few consecutive years.

The two-day summit, which started on Wednesday, November 11, and ended on Thursday, November 12, introduced collectively presidents, prime ministers and different world leaders to debate local weather motion and the following steps in worldwide local weather negotiations.

Nigeria was additionally absent from the record of nations scheduled to ship nationwide statements throughout the first a part of the high-level section on November 11 and 12, in response to the programme printed by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

Tinubu final attended the leaders’ summit at COP28 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, in 2023, the place he participated within the World Leaders’ Summit.

At COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, in November 2024, Nigeria’s nationwide assertion was delivered by the then Minister of Environment, Balarabe Lawal.

A 12 months later, Vice-President Kashim Shettima represented Tinubu at COP30 in Belém, Brazil, the place he led Nigeria’s delegation and took part in engagements on local weather motion, forests, power transition and local weather financing.

Nigeria’s absence from the opening nationwide statements at COP31 doesn’t, nonetheless, rule out a later tackle.

The UNFCCC has scheduled a resumed high-level section for November 17 and 18, permitting international locations whose heads of state or authorities didn’t ship statements throughout the first section to make their displays.

Meanwhile, provisional registration figures printed by the UNFCCC present that Nigeria has 1,506 contributors registered for COP31, giving it the third-largest nationwide delegation on the convention.

Host nation Türkiye has the best quantity with 2,950 registered contributors, adopted by Brazil with 1,994. Nigeria is forward of China, which has 1,021, and Indonesia with 978.

The Nigerian registration contains 573 contributors underneath the Party badge class and 933 underneath Party Overflow.

However, the figures are provisional and don’t imply that every one 1,506 contributors are authorities officers or local weather negotiators.

The summit’s high-level discussions embrace clear power transition, funding in inexperienced industries, entry to local weather finance and concrete resilience.

The convention is scheduled to proceed till November 20, with negotiations additionally anticipated to handle local weather adaptation and help for international locations susceptible to the results of local weather change.