Debt, inadequate funding makes Nigeria consider leaving some International Organisations

The Federal government of Nigeria plans to end its membership in many international organisations due to paucity of funds.      

NewsWireNGR confirms that the Foreign Affairs Minister, Godfrey Onyeama made this announcement while defending the Ministry’s 2021 budget estimates at the House of Representatives in Abuja on Tuesday. 

Onyeama said that the Ministry is presently owing a lot due to inadequate funding and they cannot keep up with the contributions of being a member of these organisations. 

He said, “We are owing a lot, and in the Federal Executive Council (FEC), there is a process to rationalise and cut down on the international organisations we belong to. This is because we are just owing monies left and right and it is not even good for the image of the country”

“When you look at what the ministry gets, compared to other ministries, foreign affairs ministry is underfunded, especially when you compare it to similar countries and even smaller countries like Egypt and South Africa, which have similar numbers of missions to our own, and you would find out that you just cannot compare. Ours is really much lower. And, of course, there are competing interests; we have security issues, as education takes a lot of the budget, but I think that any suggestion of collaboration between us and your committee to try to get more will be welcome.

“And for the size of a country, the giant Africa, we are supposed to defend the interest of Africa and the black race around the world. We have a vast network of technical assistance programmes to the pacific, to the Caribbean and to other Africa countries, and we want to be a big player, which sits at the table as one of the countries running the world, and to be able to do that, we just need many resources.”

Despite issues with funding for the organisation, the Minister presented a budget of N5.3 billion. N1.6 billion to move ambassadors and N3.7 billion to pay officers. 

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