The Federal Government has denied reports that the ministers who were invited to the US-Nigeria Investment Summit in Washington, D.C. shunned the forum.
Minister of Information and Culture, Mr Lai Mohammed, faulted the reports in a statement on Monday in Abuja by his media aide, Segun Adeyemi.
He said most of the ministers who were slated to attend the event which held on April 19, 2018, were not invited and were not in Washington, DC, at the time.
Mr Mohammed stressed that in this regard, the insinuation that some ministers collected estacodes without attending the forum was baseless.
He noted that the Ministers of Agriculture; Power, Works, and Housing; as well as Budget and National Planning, did not get any invitation from the organisers of the event, even though they were listed among those who were expected to attend.
The Information Minister, however, revealed that the Minister of Industry, Trade, and Investment, who was invited, was with President Muhammadu Buhari 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, D.C. at the time, was there purposely to attend the 2018 Spring Meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
Mohammed also stressed that although 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.
”It is clear from the foregoing that no minister shunned the US Investment Summit and that the reports being circulated in that regard are bereft of facts,” he said.
The Federal Government issued the statement days after the Emir of Kano, Muhammadu Sanusi II, faulted the ministers for missing the meeting.
He told reporters on Saturday last week Nigeria might lose investors because of the attitude of the ministers, despite the fact that some of them were in the US at the time of the summit.
