This is just as the foreign affairs Minister, Yusuf Tuggar, blamed paucity of funds for the delay in the appointment of ambassadors for some embassies by the Nigerian government.
At least N4.5 billion was paid by the President Bola Tinubu-led government to five different foreign missions between February and July 2024, according to checks by SaharaReporters using the public payments portal, Govspend.
This is just as the foreign affairs Minister, Yusuf Tuggar, blamed paucity of funds for the delay in the appointment of ambassadors for some embassies by the Nigerian government.
The embassies are Guangzhou, Praque, Vatican, Qatar, Amman.
Checks by SaharaReporters showed that the foreign mission in Guangzhou received N153.5million for overhead cost on February 21, 2024.
The foreign mission in Praque received N161.3million on February 6, 2024, for personnel cost.
That of Vatican got N293.9 million for personnel cost on February 6th 2024, Doha Qatar foreign mission received N333 million on same day for personnel, and Jordan received N411 million.
On July 19, 2024, the foreign mission in Amman, Jordan got N132.8 million for overhead cost, on same day the foreign mission in Guangzhou got N153 million for its overhead expenditures.
It would be recalled that since last year, the lack of appointed ambassadors continued to lead public conversations over the country’s diplomatic representation and the effectiveness of its foreign missions.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Yusuf Tuggar, had noted the delay in the envoys’ appointments to financial and economic challenges being faced by the current administration.
Tuggar had stated this at ministerial sectoral briefing.
He had noted that the ministry had not been receiving the necessary funding to operate effectively.
“The whole idea was to stop subsidising consumption and focus on subsidising production. However, the government has faced various other challenges. When the microeconomic reforms began showing benefits, platforms like Binance and the rise of crypto currencies began undermining those gains,” Tuggar stated.
