Abiy responds to Trump’s Nobel complaint

By
Emmanuel Kwame Amoh
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Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has responded after US President Donald Trump appeared to take the credit for Mr Abiy’s Nobel Peace Prize.

Mr Abiy said he doesn’t have “any clue about the criteria, how the Nobel committee select an individual for the prize”.

So he said that if Mr Trump wants to complain he must go to the Nobel Prize committee in Oslo.

“I’m not working for the prize, I am working for peace, a very critical thing for our region,” he added.

Mr Abiy was replying to a reporter’s question in South Africa’s capital Pretoria.

In October last year, Mr Abiy was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize after he signed a peace deal with Eritrea’s President Isaias Afwerki concerning the two countries’ long and bitter war.

But in an election rally, Mr Trump implied he should have got the Nobel Peace Prize.

He said: “I’m going to tell you about the Nobel Peace Prize, I’ll tell you about that. I made a deal, I saved a country, and I just heard that the head of that country is now getting the Nobel Peace Prize for saving the country. I said: ‘What, did I have something to do with it?’ Yeah, but you know, that’s the way it is. As long as we know, that’s all that matters… I saved a big war, I’ve saved a couple of them.”

Although he did not name the Nobel Peace Prize winner or the country, it is clear that Mr Trump was referring to Mr Abiy as he is the only head of state to win the prize since Mr Trump was elected in 2016.

Source: BBC