Presidency attacks Moghalu for questioning Buhari’s absence at G-7 summit

The Presidency has attacked former deputy governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Kingsley Moghalu for questioning why President Muhammadu Buhari was not invited for the 45th G-7 summit.

Moghalu, who was the presidential candidate of Young Progressive Party (YPP) at the 2019 general elections, had on Thursday, said it was sad that Nigeria, supposedly the biggest economy in Africa, was not invited for the summit.

But in a statement Thursday night by Buhari’s senior special assistant on media and publicity, Garba Shehu, the Presidency said Moghalu was ignorant and that he “makes ignorance fashionable.”

The statement read, “Kingsley 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.”

The G-7, a forum of the seven countries with the world’s largest developed economies, has France, Germany, Italy, Japan, The United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada as members.

Government leaders of these countries meet annually on international economic and monetary issues. Government leaders of other countries who are working in line with the goal of the forum are often invited as guest countries to G-7 meeting.

The 45th G7 summit, which held on August 24–26, 2019, in Biarritz, Nouvelle-Aquitaine, France, had leaders of Burkina Faso, Egypt, Rwanda, Senegal and South Africa invited as guests from Africa.