A legal practitioner, Mr Femi Falana, has called on the federal government to as a matter of necessity cut down the number of Nigerian embassies abroad.
He said this should be considered by the Muhammadu Buhari administration in order to cut costs, serve the people better and reduce the level of corruption, stressing that there is no need of having an embassy in every country.
He advocated this in a keynote address at the public presentation of a book authored by the former chairman, Board of Trustees of TETFund, Dr Musa Babayo, in Abuja. He said, “There’s an area that we need to develop now that the government is trying to cut costs. We have too many embassies all over the world. I got to a country in Africa recently and discovered that the country has a population of about 300,000 and we have an embassy there. We have embassies in the 16-member states of West Africa and in all African countries. I think we have to do something about that.”
“I passed through one of the North African countries and I said to our ambassador in that country, that this is a beautiful building, and he said, ‘yes, this building is a rented building’. I asked, ‘how much do you pay?’ And he said ‘$800,000 per annum.’ I asked ‘Why? When did we begin to have diplomatic relations with this country? When did you establish this embassy?’ And he said, ‘In 1962.’
“I think that is unpardonable that we have been renting an apartment building for our embassy in that country since 1962. I think President Buhari has a job cut out for him.” “Ours is a very unfortunate country. In 1999, we brought somebody who ruled us 30 years earlier; now we have just brought back somebody who ruled us 30 years earlier, and that is President Buhari. I think we missed the other opportunity and I’m saying that we shouldn’t miss this one. Nigerian citizens are prepared to make it work this time”.
