The Special Adviser to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu on Media and Publicity, Ajuri Ngelale, has said his principal warned his cabinet members before the Federal government delegation left Nigeria for the Climate Change Conference (COP28) in Dubai.

Recall that the high number of Nigerian delegates at the conference caused controversy on social media last week.

The Presidency released a statement saying some of the delegates at the conference were not funded by the Federal government.

Ngelale, in an interview with TVC, said Tinubu warned during the Federal Executive Council meeting before departing for COP28 that his cabinet members who have no business in Dubai for the conference must not embark on the trip.

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According to him, cabinet members who embark on the trip to hang around hotels and convention centres would be sanctioned and risk losing their jobs.

He said, “Before we left for Dubai COP28, the Monday before we left at the Federal Executive Council meeting, today’s the end of the meeting, President Bola Tinubu turned on his microphone and he said to everybody in the room, including myself that he has issued a prior warning to the entire executive leadership across the Federal government of Nigeria, that if you do not have any business to conduct on behalf of the Federal government of Nigeria in any of these major summits, you have no business using taxpayers money to finance your trip and logistics to that location.

“Before UNGA, the UN General Assembly in September, we issued a statement from the Presidency where the President made it very clear that not only was he massively pruning down the numbers that has initially been presented to him with respect to the Federal delegation to UNGA but he also issued a warning at that if anybody going on these trips who has no business going on these trips, they will be sanctioned. That was September. Fast word to the Monday before we left for COP28, the President said it again.

“He said that this time, I am issuing to all of you a final warning, anybody that is going to these trips to just hang around hotels or convention centers, with no articulated programme of participation at COP28, if I find out that this is what it is, I am telling you today that your jobs are on the line’. This is what he said days before we went to COP28. It was never made public. I am making it public now.”