Foreign Mission Debts A Dent On Nigeria’s Integrity – SGF

The secretary to the government of the federation, Boss Mustapha has lamented that the scale of perennial indebtedness of Nigeria’s foreign missions poses attendant damage to the nation’s integrity.

He disclosed this yesterday at the inauguration of the Presidential Committee on the review of the number and strategy for resourcing Nigeria’s diplomatic missions worldwide in Abuja.

Consequently, President Muhammadu Buhari approved the Constitution of the committee.

He said “as we are all aware, our Diplomatic Missions around the world are currently faced with multifaceted challenges following, among others, the scale of perennial indebtedness they find themselves. This poses attendant damage to our nation’s integrity.

“Let me recall at this point, some cost-saving measures taken by previous administrations in this regard including; reducing the number and size of missions, authorising concurrent accreditation to other countries, enhancing and prioritising budgetary releases to Missions, etc.

He, however, lamented that all these efforts were unfortunately short-lived.

According to him, preliminary findings revealed that the root causes of the challenges were interwoven and systemic.

As such, Mustapha noted that this government realised that a broad-based and sustainable solution that is service-wide in nature must be taken as they relate to institutions such as the Central Bank of Nigeria, the Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, Federal Civil Service Commission, etc.

He said the challenges will have to be addressed holistically on a short-, medium- and long-term basis.

“Therefore, the establishment and deliberate composition of this Presidential Committee will enable Mr. President to tackle the root cause of the critical state of affairs of our Diplomatic Missions in particular and its impact on the image of Nigeria in the international arena in general.

The SGF said the timeline for the activities of this Committee is three  months and its Terms of Reference are as follows:

“Determine the current number, categories of Nigeria’s Diplomatic Missions; subject matter desks worldwide and categorize their strategic importance and impact worldwide and make appropriate recommendations.

“Identify and categorise the revenue generation capacity of missions, performance in this regard, causes, and level of indebtedness.

“Review the understanding and application of critical extant policies, guidelines, circulars, codes, regulations, financial management systems, statutes, etc across Nigeria’s Missions to minimize bottlenecks, misapplication, and curbing infractions.

“Review all previous reports on establishment of Missions and measures taken to effectively and economically manage Nigeria’s Mission, identify challenges and make appropriate recommendations on sustainable steps to be taken as well as identifying reasons why the measures were not effective.

“Review factors promoting or hindering inter-Agency collaboration, cohesion and effective service delivery at Nigeria’s Mission and desks and make appropriate recommendation.

“Review Human Resources Management Systems and practices in Nigeria’s Foreign Service and make appropriate recommendations on how to improve it in a sustainable manner.

“Identify cost cutting measures and all other steps that need to be taken to drastically reduce cost of running Nigeria’s Foreign Missions.

“Review all assets of Nigeria’s Foreign Missions with a view to document and assess their viability as well as give recommendations for sustainability.

“Review any other matter and make any other recommendation(s) that would be beneficial to Foreign Service of Nigeria in a sustainable manner,” he added .