Richard?Lord

Cul­tur­al Am­bas­sador to Cari­com and Chief Ser­vant of the Na­tion­al Joint Ac­tion Com­mit­tee Makan­dal Daa­ga had many peo­ple baf­fled yes­ter­day as he kept wish­ing them "good night" dur­ing a lun­cheon at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre in St Ann's. It was at the an­nu­al Eman­ci­pa­tion lun­cheon host­ed by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar that Daa­ga made the er­rors. Oth­ers in the au­di­ence in­clud­ed sev­er­al Cab­i­net min­is­ters, Niger­ian min­is­ter Edem Duke, Speak­er Wade Mark, Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Tim­o­thy Hamel-Smith, chair­man of the Eman­ci­pa­tion Sup­port Com­mit­tee Khafra Kam­bon and mem­bers of the diplo­mat­ic corps. Daa­ga at no point in his 20-minute ad­dress ac­knowl­edged he had made an er­ror. Some mem­bers of the au­di­ence looked dis­mayed as he re­peat­ed the mis­take. Daa­ga al­so re­ferred to the lun­cheon as a din­ner. He said a lot more must be done to help the or­di­nary man in T&T as the cel­e­bra­tion of Eman­ci­pa­tion was not enough. In her ad­dress, the Prime Min­is­ter said the pro­posed air­bridge be­tween T&T and Nige­ria was now clos­er to be­com­ing a re­al­i­ty. There have been re­peat­ed calls in the past years for di­rect flights be­tween Nige­ria and T&T.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said agree­ment on the ini­tia­tive was clos­er as the bi­lat­er­al ne­go­ti­a­tions were near­ing con­clu­sion. Nige­ria's Tourism, Cul­ture and Na­tion­al Ori­en­ta­tion Min­is­ter Edem Duke said T&T was spe­cial and "tru­ly blessed." He said while many peo­ple dwelled on the chal­lenges of life no one was ever giv­en more than he could han­dle. Duke said all coun­tries in the world had chal­lenges. He added: "So when you think of a coun­try like Nige­ria, with 167 mil­lion peo­ple, 250 eth­nic groups, 500 dif­fer­ent lin­guis­tic ori­en­ta­tions and 774 lo­cal gov­ern­ment ar­eas, I think you (in T&T) should count your bless­ings." Duke was part of the Niger­ian del­e­ga­tion, led by Pres­i­dent Good­luck Jonathan, which came to T&T for the Eman­ci­pa­tion Day cel­e­bra­tions ear­li­er this week. He said the spir­it of Eman­ci­pa­tion had brought "a sense of har­mo­ny" to T&T. Duke said it was un­for­tu­nate his coun­try's del­e­ga­tion to T&T was not larg­er and the peo­ple of Nige­ria could learn from the peo­ple of T&T with re­spect to eth­nic di­ver­si­ty and the im­por­tance of hu­man dig­ni­ty and re­spect for every eth­nic na­tion­al­i­ty. He said the Niger­ian del­e­ga­tion had learnt very im­por­tant things from the ob­ser­vance in T&T.