National Embarrassment..GEJ Failed To Address AU Assembly

It was a disastrous outing for Nigeria yesterday at the ongoing Special Assembly of the African Union (AU) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to mark the organisation’s 50th anniversary: President Goodluck Jonathan missed the slot allotted to him to give his speech.

Reports from the summit claimed last night that two members of President Jonathan’s delegation who spoke from Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, said that there was confusion among delegates and an embarrassment on the part of Nigerian officials when the president failed to show up in the hall to deliver his speech.

According to the report, President Jonathan’s “no-show” allegedly set tongues wagging as delegates from other African nations asked the confused Nigerian officials why their president did not appear to address the AU at an event as important as this year’s assembly of the AU.

The sources, alleged, offered conflicting accounts of President’s Jonathan’s whereabouts. One of the sources claimed that he heard that the Nigerian leader had gone to the toilet when he was called to the podium. The source also added that a presidential insider later explained that Jonathan was having a bilateral meeting with a head of state from another African country at the time.

But another source scoffed at both excuses. “If the president was in the toilet, his aides should have informed the protocol at the summit to delay in calling him to speak. And if the president wanted to hold a bilateral meeting, why should he fix it during the time he was told he would address the assembly?”

He added that somebody within the president’s inner circle disclosed that he had stayed late feasting with his associates and consulting with some of his loyal governors back in Nigeria on the ways to push against the Nigeria Governors’ Forum  that elected Rivers State governor Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi as its chairman on Friday.  Amaechi has a long-running political feud with the president, who allegedly backed Governor Jonah Jang of Plateau State for the NGF chairmanship. Governor’s Jang’s defeat allegedly rattled the president at the summit.

“Mr President was up very, very late. But he had been up that late at night and still woke up in time to honour his appointments,” the source said. “But today (yesterday), he did not seem to realise that addressing the assembly was an important obligation.”

The report said its two main sources said the delegation and other Nigerian diplomats were shocked and embarrassed when the president was called to give his speech but he was nowhere to be found. “The official summit announcer called Mr President a few more times, and then the programme went ahead to another speaker,” the source said.

It said Jonathan later showed up to join in the photo session at the meeting and disappeared shortly afterwards without offering any explanation for his absence when it was his turn to speak.

When contacted, the president’s spokesman, Reuben Abati said as at the time the president was called to address the assembly, he was attending a meeting with other world leaders on issues of bilateral relations. 

According to him, “Mr. President was attending on the sidelines of the AU event, at the time Nigeria was called. It was a meeting on Infrastructure in West Africa. It is perfectly normal for Presidents to meet on the sidelines of any international meeting. And as the AU plenary went on yesterday, many Presidents stepped out to hold bilateral meetings, and return to the hall.

So, as you can see, there is nothing amiss here. President Jonathan was perfectly in order. He did not abandon his duty post. He was in fact busy at work on behalf of Nigerians. I see the mischief that has suddenly erupted around this matter as a classic case of much ado about nothing.  
It will be recalled that a similar scenario played out at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOgGM) in Australia few years ago