It is unsurprising that the Nigerian delegates to the 28th Conference of Parties (COP 28) is the highest in Africa. What has been the subject of debate is why the country’s delegates tie with countries like China at 1,411 or surpass the 770 delegates of a country like the United States of America.

Besides concerns around the relatively high number of Nigerian participants alone, which was put at 591 as of November 30, 2023, the name and designation of some of the Nigerian delegates have attracted comments from Nigerians ranging from the caustic to the sarcastic.

It worries many that President Tinubu’s Government is spending money to fly members of his family to a serious policy round table when they have no official role in the country’s entourage.

Some maintain that a President is at will to travel with any member of his family or friend that he wishes. What they disagree with is the designation of the President’s son and friends as “Management Staff” when they fulfill no such roles.

The Management Team

What exposed President Tinubu’s son(s) and many Nigerian tourist participants at COP 28 was an unprecedented decision by the organisers to publish the names of all participants and their official sponsors this year.

“For the first time in COP history, every single delegate has been named in the participant lists (not including support staff). Previous COPs have typically seen thousands of “overflow” participants in which countries and UN agencies could nominate delegates without their names appearing on their official lists.

“This year, also for the first time, 3,000 “virtual-only” participants are named, which takes the overall provisional delegate total for COP28 to more than 100,000,” the Carbon Brief noted.

While the propriety of the Nigerian government’s sponsoring of officials’ relations to the Dubai Conference of Parties is debatable, the lack of transparency and full disclosure of these relationships is not sublime.

Several countries registered spouses and relations of officials to the Party, but, unlike Nigeria, they did not just refer to them as “Management Staff”.They either designated them as “sponsor(’s) relation” or “spouse” of the official or functionary.

However, the rush to see the lofty sights of Dubai may not be a Nigerian problem alone. It seems all parties to the Climate Accord decided to party in Dubai for reasons beyond Climate concerns.

The attendance this year doubled the new record set at the COP 27.

The provisional total for COP28 suggests that 97,372 delegates have registered to attend the summit in person. With a further 3,074 attending virtually, this takes the overall total to 100,446.

This comfortably makes the Dubai event the largest COP in history. For comparison, the first climate COP – held in Berlin in 1995 – had 3,969 delegates.

Last year’s COP in Sharm El-Sheikh received almost 50,000 delegates, which put it some distance ahead of the 38,000 that attended COP26 in Glasgow in 2021. It highlights a trend of increasing participation at climate COPs following a dip in attendance after the peak of COP21 in Paris in 2015, according to reports from Carbon Brief.

It appears Dubai’s tourist attractions might have contributed to the spike in participants of all sorts – management, media, and main participants.

Who will not want to be in Dubai? After all, COP or not, it’s a party.

The Media Team

While the Management staff may either be an innocent misnomer or an intentional misinformation by the Nigerian government, the Nigerian media appeared to be more transparent.

What about their number? Too many or too few?

Reporters from Nigeria were less than 1% (0.9%) of all Media representatives to the conference, sorry, conference of parties.

In all, Nigeria’s media team had 36 persons among the total 3,973 media functionaries in Dubai. Women were a third of Nigeria’s participants, with only 11 women among the 36-man media team from the country.

The Main Team

President Bola Ahmed Tinubu led 590 parties and 821 parties overflow, a total of 1,411 state-sponsored participants, to the Dubai Party.

His delegation to COP, his first, has been described as outsized, unnecessary, and wasteful because it costs millions of dollars, or billions of Naira, in flights, per diem of officials, hotel accommodation, and many other indirect economic losses on the country’s struggling economy.

Tinubu was not a big fan of green energy transitions until he became the President of Nigeria, reports show.

“We need to tell the West, if you don’t guarantee our finances and work with us to stop this, we are not going to comply with your climate change.

“We are a poor nation. They say we need to plant more trees and they are not giving us money,” Tinubu said in October 2022, a throwback by Peoples Gazette revealed.

However, President Tinubu, whose interest seem to be in a financially beneficial alliance with the West on green energy efforts, declared at COP 28: “We are committed to critical steps to reduce methane emissions by ensuring gas flaring is eliminated. There is a huge penalty for that. There is equally a huge incentive to do so.”.

It appears one does not need 1,411 people to accompany one to say this, considering the country’s state of economic health.

On the other hand, how many delegates are enough for COP 28? How many are too few? How many are too much?

Dataphyte analysis shows that the country’s delegation matched its proportion of the population.

Nigeria’s population is 2.8% of the world’s population, and it sent 2.7% of the COP 28 delegates to represent it.

However, if land area directly concerns a country’s options for green energy transitions and climate change effects, Nigeria has less than 1% (0.7%) of the world’s land mass.

Should it have sent about 0.7% of the 51,695 total parties to COP 28? It appears 362 delegates would not be too few.

Well, we can only determine how much of human, bilateral, and policy investments Nigeria needs to invest in its environmental concerns when we get into the main thing.

This comes first to give us a measured assessment of our diplomatic teams to the COP 28 – the management team, the media team, and the main team.

We’ll come back with the main thing, as the COP 28 approaches a conclusive end.

Till then, have a green and serene weekend rest!