Nigeria mulls exit from some int’l organisations

The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Godfrey Onyeama, says plans are underway to reduce the number of international organisations Nigeria belongs to because of paucity of funds.

He disclosed this in Abuja while defending the ministry’s 2021 budget at the House of Representatives.

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He said the ministry was faced with a challenge of meeting its contribution to those international organisations.

“We’re owing a lot, and in the Federal Executive Council, there’s a process to rationalise and cut down on the international organisations we belong to.

“This is because we’re just owing monies left and right and it’s not even good for the image of the country,” he said.

Onyeama said one of the challenges the ministry was facing was the movement of officers, ambassadors and their families.

He said N1.6bn was required for the movement of ambassadors; while officers would require N3.7bn, making a total of N5.3bn for the whole movement.

He said in addition to what was received in the revised 2020 budget, the ministry would require additional N1.1bn in 2021 to meet the cost of movement.

He stressed the need to address the inadequate overhead budgetary provisions to the missions, which is resulting to a lot of debt for electricity and rent.

“Just on Monday, the ambassador in Hungary called to say they are going to throw them out from the chancery building. That the landlord is coming and that they do not have the money to pay.

“And we get that from a lot of missions across the world and that is not a sustainable way of running Foreign Service.

“Then this exchange rate differential with the CBN is really something we need to address once and for all.

The minister said that the ministry requires an additional capital allocation of N5bn to address some of the missions’ renovation needs.

According to him, “a lot of our missions are eyesores and it is just a huge embarrassment to the country that we can have mission in such terrible conditions.”

Onyeama said that between 2012 and 2014, the ministry owed local contractors N1.3bn.

According to him, “we have been receiving letters from the National Assembly forwarding to us various claims and judgement and asking us to pay them.

“We have a big challenge with clothing allowances, as you know, all officers in our missions from grade level 7 and above are entitled to US$2,500 clothing allowance per annum.

“In the 2021 budget, about 1,312 officers will be expecting the payment of these allowances and if you take at the CBN official rate, we’re looking at N1.2bn. What we’ve available is N762m for that. To able to pay the clothing allowances, we still need at additional sum of N500m,” he said. (NAN)