Onyeama: It’s Cheaper to Keep Foreign Missions Than Close Them

The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Geoffrey Onyeama, has said unknown to a lot of people, it was cheaper to keep and maintain foreign missions than close them down, because the costs of pay-offs usually ran into millions in dollars, given local laws.

Speaking at the 22nd Edition of the PMB Administration Scorecard Series in Abuja, the nation’s capital, he said, “Reducing the mission, you are absolutely right.

We do want to rationalise, but there are two challenges. Nigeria is a big country. We are the power in Africa and we aspire to Security Council membership.
“We are looked upon as a leader in Africa. So, we have to have a wide presence in a number of countries. Of course, if we cannot afford it, what we have done, you can also rationalise the staffing of those missions. So, we have a lot smart missions, saving a lot of cost.
“Interestingly, when we started to reduce mission, it was extremely expensive. In fact, it was even cheaper to maintain those missions, because you have to pay off a lot of local staff and they have local laws – the pensions and so many things. So, you find out that to close one mission in one country comes to millions and millions of dollars.

“So, that was a big challenge, and we have to balance the two: our need to have that presence if we want to be the big country, trade in many countries – Nigerians are all over as you mentioned in many different countries, supporting them and providing consular assistance and so forth. But it’s still a work-in-progress. We cannot reduce too much if we really want to be the Nigeria that we want to be – the big power that we want to be.”
On the issuance of advisories, when situations arise, Onyeama said, “Now, on advisories, you issue advisory on the advice of your embassy in that country. So, during the Ukraine issue, I was on the phone constantly with our ambassador in Ukraine. Do we issue an advisory? Do we start evacuating? And he was, no, I think we are okay.

“There’s a BBC programme interviewing a lot of the Nigerians in Ukraine, where they said no, they were very happy; that they didn’t see any problem. And to tell you the truth, nobody saw a Russian invasion coming. Puttin came on and he said we are not going to invade.

“We give it to the US. They maintained from day one that these people are going to invade. So, what do you do? We rely on our people on the ground in each country and that’s why we have embassies and missions to advise us on issuing advisories in those countries.”