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The Federal Government has shut down three embassies abroad and downsized another one due to paucity of funds.
Minister of Foreign Affairs, Geoffrey Onyeama, disclosed this on Tuesday at a press briefing in Abuja.
The minister said the government has shut down operations in Sri Lanka, Czech Republic and the Republic of Serbia while the embassy in Ukraine has been downsized.
He stated that the ministry has been unable to maintain the embassies due to paucity of funds, adding that the close down of the embassies were necessary because they are in terrible states that is unbefitting of a nation of Nigeria’s status.
“Every embassy has written to us about their huge financial demands and when we go to these embassies we see clearly very unattractive state that does not reflect well on the country.
“Very often the staff of the embassy really find things extremely difficult. Clearly, if we want to operate on the scale and scope in which we are at the moment with over a 100 missions around the world, we need to spend a lot more.
“What I am saying is that rather than having this terrible circle of inadequate funding for missions, headquarters and so forth we have to reduce the scope.
“We should have foreign missions that we can fund, we might not necessarily close the embassies per se, it might be reducing the number of staff in the embassies,” the minister said.