The Presidency has called out Kingsley Moghalu, the 2019 Young Progressives Party, YPP, presidential candidate, over a statement regarding President Muhammadu Buhari’s absence at G7 2019 summit.
Moghalu had in a post on his Twitter page described President Buhari’s absence at the G7 summit as disgraceful, while making reference to ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo.
The tweet read: “It’s sad that President of Africa’s supposedly largest economy wasn’t invited to the G7 summit in France but @PaulKagame of Rwanda and @CyrilRamaphosa of South Africa were. Our country should be at the table, not on the menu! Obasanjo, like him or not, was at the table.
“Now, Ghana is now eating our cake in West Africa. It’s getting more foreign investment than Nigeria. Obama visited there but not us. We should face the fact of our decline and what to do about it, instead of puerile not-picking arguments!”
But Buhari’s Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Malam Garba Shehu in response said the non-invitation of Buhari to witness G7 meeting this year “is not a snub and does not diminish Nigeria’s status as the biggest economy.”
Shehu described Moghalu as being ignorant and playing petty politics, adding that not all countries get invited every year.
Shehu on his official Twitter page wrote: “Moghalu is either ignorant or playing petty politics. The non-invitation of President Buhari to witness the G7 meeting this year is not a snub.
“Neither does it diminish the status of Nigeria as the biggest economy on the continent. It seems no one clarified to the one-time Presidential Candidate how the G7 secretariat works.
“If they invite a country with an economy the size of Niger State, not Kano’s, not even Lagos’s does it call for Dr. Moghalu’s lamentation? Today, as we see it, they call this country, tomorrow they decide to have another. It’s entirely up to them.
“Buhari didn’t go to Europe. Europe came to him in Japan, where the EU had him sign an MOU for 50 Million Euro in support to the country’s devastated North East.
“The joke is not on President Buhari. The joke is on Moghalu for attempting to make ignorance fashionable.”
