MANY of Nigerian's foreign missions are going through a severe financial crisis preventing them from carrying out their diplomatic functions due to the fact that they are yet to receive their budgetary allocations from Abuja.
President Muhammadu Buhari is yet to approve the 2016 budget as a result of numerous differences between the executive and legislature, meaning that the Federal Ministry of External Affairs is yet to get its annual allocation. This has meant that the foreign missions have in turn not received any money and it is seriously affecting their ability to issue documents like passports and visas.
In the UK for instance, Nigerians now face severe delays when it comes to the issuance of visas and passports and sometimes, applicants do not get the actual documents they applied for. Several other missions have been unable to pay their staff, are unable to pay the rent of embassies and workers’ residences and lack the funding to carry out day-to-day operations.
In the US for instance, since Ambassador Ade Adefuye left office last year, the embassy has had to resort to borrowing from banks to pay its bills. Similarly, the UK mission has had to resort to credit to meet its obligations and matters are made worse by the fact that neither mission has a substantive ambassador.
Several Nigerians in the diaspora complained of the incompetence exhibited by Nigerian embassy officials overseas. They complained about their inability to get either visa or passport appointments, gain access to the missions promptly or even get assistance from them, adding that it is never the case with missions of other countries that treat their citizens as their number one priority.
Some also spoke of alleged demands for gratification by Nigeria embassy officials for the simplest of requests, which also compounds the negative image of Nigeria abroad. Last September, President Buhari ordered a review of Nigeria's missions overseas with the aim of pruning the number and improving the quality of services being rendered.
Currently, Nigeria has a total of 119 foreign missions which the president said are too expensive to maintain due to the economic challenges the country is currently facing. Despite the challenges, some former envoys have challenged President Buhari’s plan to reduce Nigeria’s missions abroad, asking the federal government to rescind its decision by allowing the existing 119 missions to remain.
In recent reactions to the move, a former permanent secretary in the foreign ministry Ambassador Martin Uhomoibhi, Nigeria’s former permanent representative to the United Nations Ambassador Umunna Humphrey Orjiako and Ambassador Joe Keshi, urged the government not to close any of the missions but to adopt other measures to cut costs. They argued that the closure of missions by Nigeria could be misinterpreted by the host countries and reminded President Buhari of the critical position the country occupies in Africa and the global community.
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