Nigeria may have concluded arrangements to shut down five foreign missions and embassies in the countries which are yet to be disclosed.
Minister of Foreign Affairs, Geoffrey Onyeama, who dropped this hint in an interaction with news men today, Thursday, in Abuja said that the process for the closure of the embassies had reached advanced stage and awaiting the approval of the President.
“We do not want to indicate the embassies that will be closed yet because we are in the process of submitting the proposals, the cost analysis and also the political analysis we did to the president. When he sees that, he may or may not want to close some, so we have not yet reached the stage of closing some.”
The minister said that closing missions abroad is “extremely expensive. The expense, costs of closing embassies is so high and prohibitive but in the long run it will more economical.
“The government is following up on that and we have sort of prepared the roadmap; we have started the implementation of that and made also recommendations in that context.
“Paradoxically, closing missions is extremely expensive. At first sight it seems obvious that you close it you are saving cost but you will actually find that the cost of closing is almost prohibitive.
“But in the long run it will be cheaper, but in the immediate and short term it is expensive but we have started the process.”
Nigeria currently has 119 foreign missions.
Source: NAN. [myad]
