Lai Mohammed denies ministers shunned US-Nigeria Investment Summit

The Federal Government has denied media reports that Ministers who were invited to the US-Nigeria Investment Summit in Washington, DC, on April 19 shunned the Forum.

The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, in a statement in London on Monday, said most of the Ministers who were slated to attend the event were not invited and were not in Washington at the time.

Mohammed said that no Minister shunned the Summit held at the Embassy of Nigeria in Washington and the reports being circulated in that regard are bereft of facts.

He also said that the insinuation that some ministers collected estacodes without attending the forum was baseless.

He remarked that the Ministers of Agriculture; Power Works and Housing and that of Budget and National Planning did not get any invitation from the organizers, even though they were listed among those expected to attend.

Mohammed said the Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment, who was invited, was with the President at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in London at the time of the summit.

He added that the Minister of Finance, who was in Washington DC at the time, was there purposely to attend the 2018 Spring Meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

Lai Mohammed further said that though he was invited to the forum, he wrote back to inform the organisers that he would not be able to make the trip due to conflicting schedules.

The Emir of Kano, Mohammed Sanusi II, who attended the forum, had in a media interaction, criticised the non-participation of Nigerian ministers at the event.