By Rayyan Alhassan The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Godfrey Onyeama, says plans are underway to reduce the number of International O...
By Rayyan Alhassan
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.
Mr Onyeama made this known while defending the ministry’s
2021 budget at the House of Representatives on Tuesday in Abuja.
He said that the ministry is faced with a challenge of
meeting its contribution to those International organisations.
Read Also: Nigeria will pull through its socio-economic
challenges soon — Onyeama
“We are owing a lot, and in the Federal Executive Council
(FEC), there is a process to rationalise and cut down on the International
Organisations we belong to.
“This is because we are just owing monies left and right and
it is not even good for the image of the country,” he said.
Mr Onyeama, who decried the poor funding of the ministry,
reeled out the challenges facing the 2021 budget implementation.
The minister said that one the challenges the ministry is
facing is the movement of officers, ambassadors and their families.
He said that N1.6 billion is required for the movement of
ambassadors while officers will require N3.7 billion, making a total of N5.3
billion for the whole movement.
The minister said in addition to what was received in the
revised budget, the ministry will require an additional N1.1 billion 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.
“It is not so easy, all of these things are computed in
naira and all the payments abroad are in dollars and once the exchange rate is
changed, it never goes the other way, it always goes up, it never comes down
visa vis the dollar. This means immediate shortfall for all our missions,” he
said
The minister said that the ministry requires an additional
capital allocation of N5 billion 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.”
Mr Onyeama said that between 2012 and 2014, the ministry
owed local contractors N1.3 billion.
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
are looking at N1.2 billion.
“What we have available is N762 million for that, to able to
pay the clothing allowances, we still need at additional sum of N500 million,”
he said.
Mr Onyeama said that the ministry needs N225 million to pay
premium for the insurance of the ministry’s head quarters.
According to him, that is based on an estimate of the value
of the building at N12 billion which is a very rare conservative estimate of
that building.
He said that the ministry needs N342 million for the
building of infrastructure which bridge the ICT gap the ministry currently
faces.
“I was talking about the ICT deficit, with presence in 110
countries, we believe that the ministry should be in a key position for foreign
direct investment and export promotion, leveraging on our physical presence in
110 countries of the world to make that possible.
“It would be a one-stop shop for Nigerian businesses without
going through all kinds of bottle necks. We want your consideration to allocate
this amount into the envelope.
“Part of what will go for digitizing our missions and the
24-7 health desk that we need to have to keep in touch with Nigerians around
the world.
“That will really transform the ministry and get us to do
things we need to be doing and add economic values to the country,” he said.
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