AU chairmanship: Why Nigeria’s candidate lost —Foreign Minister

Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr. Olugbenga Ashiru
With the  interview after the election of a new Chairperson of the African Union in Ethopia, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ambassador Olugbenga Ashiru, spoke about the dynamics of the exercise.

JOHN ALECHENU was thereSouth Africa’s candidate for the position of Chairperson of the African Union has just won the election against a candidate supported by Nigeria and the ECOWAS. What happened?We must admit that South Africa ran a better campaign. You can imagine that South Africa was able to dispatch envoys once or twice to all 51 African states, you can imagine the outcome. If they have worked hard which we must accept, then the result was not a surprise to some of us.

Nobody saw Gabon as the leading campaigner for Ping in this election. Many countries saw Nigeria as the country behind him; why are we now passing the buck to Gabon?………..