President Muhammadu Buhari has on
Tuesday directed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to review the size and number
of Nigeria’s foreign missions abroad.
This disclosure was made known
after he was briefed by the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs, Ambassador Bulus Lolo.
According to him, Nigeria needs
to review the number of its present 119 missions abroad based on Nigeria’s
capacity, especially as the economy is looking down.
He said: “We
also talked about the state of our embassies abroad. All of these in the
context of what Nigeria aspires to be at home, in the sub-region, in the
continent and across the globe.
“Mr.
President asked the ministry to be realistic in terms of our representation
abroad. We have 119 missions. He asked the questions whether we need to have
that number or we rationalized based on our capacity. Right now, the economy is
looking down. We are trying to revive and revamp. It is a matter of time.
“The
specific directive that he has given is that a committee be formed to look at
the whole issue of our representation abroad, the size and the number of
missions on whether or not the number should remain the same or we do something
about those numbers.”
To this end, he said a committee
will be set up to look at the whole issue of Nigeria’s representations abroad.
Buhari said that there was no
point operating missions all over the world with dilapidated facilities and
demoralised staff when the need for some of the missions was questionable.
No comments:
Post a Comment