Starved missions

6 days ago 15

Editorial

September 11, 2025 by Our Reporter

Brazil Argentina and world flags is flying

•Government needs to work out sustainable ways to run our embassies

Countries have continued to establish embassies which serve as the main offices for the diplomatic representatives of one country in another since the 13th century.

Their duties include maintaining relations, promoting national interests and serving their citizens abroad. Embassy officials deal with political, economic, and cultural exchanges, issue passports and visas and provide consular services.

It is in this context that Nigeria, too, as a modern state, established embassies in many countries with which the country maintains relations.

Because of their importance in international relations, the embassies are necessarily money guzzlers. They have several bills to pick: rent, payments to service providers, salaries for locally recruited members of the staff and allowances for home-based officers, among others.

Unfortunately, Nigeria has in recent times been having challenges meeting these basic obligations due to the country’s economic challenges.

The economic challenges led to budgetary shortfalls to all arms of government, including the foreign missions. This, over the years, the embassies could not perform their functions well. Their ability to fulfill their core diplomatic responsibilities, including payment of salaries to the country’s 450 foreign service officers in 109 missions, 76 embassies, 22 high commissions and consulates suffered as a result.

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As a matter of fact, it got to a situation where the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had to admit these challenges publicly. The ministry’s spokesperson, Kimiebi Ebienfa, said in a statement that “The ministry is not unaware of the restrictions that financial limitations have placed on the smooth running of the missions, including the inability to pay salaries of locally recruited staff, financial obligations to service providers, rent to landlords, and the foreign service allowance to home-based officers,” among other obligations.

Serious as this might be, it is not the first time that Nigeria’s embassies would be having this kind of experience. We had it in 2023. We also had several similar experiences even before then.

As a retired diplomat, Mr Rashid Akinkuolie, said, “It is a perennial issue, it is not something that is just happening today.’’

This is enough reason to make the country wiser. It is not the kind of problem that we should be having frequently if only for the embarrassment it exposes the country to.

It is however gratifying that the Federal Government says it has started taking steps to reduce this financial crisis on the embassies. “The government is taking decisive and concrete steps to address the issues of fund allocation to all its missions abroad,” the statement by Ebienfa added.

We urge the government to expedite the disbursement of the over 80 percent of the funds that is ready to take care of the priority concerns of the embassies, including payment to service providers, salaries of locally recruited staff and arrears of claims due to officers.

The government may also explore Akinkuolie’s suggestion on the way out of the debt crisis: “The only way to address the issue is to pay them in foreign currency. The solution is that the vote should be denominated in dollars but where you use naira, you face problems. The salaries are fixed, and the cost of running the mission is fixed, so, the allocation to the mission shouldn’t be denominated in naira.’’

In addition, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs should develop a sustainable financial framework for the embassies, with broader reforms aimed at improving fiscal governance and resource allocation.

Where necessary, the Federal Government could consider reducing the number of the foreign missions if they are becoming too expensive to maintain. The implications of this financial crisis on them are many: children of embassy personnel dropping out of school due to non-payment of school fees. In many instances, their landlords eject them for failing to meet their rent obligations.

Not to talk of the other indignities that the embassy workers suffer and the embarrassment to the entire country.

The embassies are the country’s face outside. We have to treat them specially if we want to be respected in the comity of nations.