There is disquiet at some Nigerian foreign Missions and embassies after the President Bola Tinubu-led government failed to release their capital and overhead votes to offset labilities and conduct diplomatic businesses barely two weeks to their departure.
The mission and embassies officers are worried that they are going to be stranded and worse still face eviction embarrassment as Service Providers are threatening court actions against them from their house and chancery of those on rented houses.
The officials lament the failure to meet their payment obligations and their inability to handle some logistics challenges arising from the non-remittance of their overhead costs for four months by the Federal Ministry Of Foreign Affairs.
Sources close to one of the Foreign Missions told SaharaReporters that some Nigerian ambassadors have been running the affairs of the Nigerian Missions since June 2023 till date under what he described as Out of Pocket Expenditures and on credit bases.
The source noted that for four months, no tranche of the overhead cost due to Foreign Missions has been released to them till date and according to him “this has caused difficulties that some of the ambassadors may not be able to handle some logistics problems including some indebtedness to service providers consequently risking court action by the creditors” and backlogs of officers entitlements.
But a public affairs analyst, Prof. Olawale Olubanjo blamed the current travails of the Nigerian ambassadors on corruption.
Olubanjo reasoned, “How can overhead cost which is provided in the budget not be released to those it is meant for four months counting? lt is possible the cabals in the Foreign Affairs Ministry are waiting for the Ambassadors to exit office before they would do the cleanup “but how can they exit when four months’ indebtedness been cleared?”
Recall that the President Tinubu had recently recalled the Nigerian Ambassadors serving in Nigeria Foreign Missions which deadline set for October 30, 2023.
According to the source, many embassies officials risk being thrown out from their residences by their landlords if nothing is urgently done and recalled principal representatives of Mr President will face untold hardship settling at home without collecting the monies owed them by mission and embassies.
Efforts by SaharaReporters to get a response from the Federal Ministry of Foreign Affairs proved abortive as of the time of filing this report.
