Politics

By Kennedy Nnamani

THE Federal Government has inaugurated the presidential committee on the review of the number and strategy for resourcing Nigeria’s diplomatic missions worldwide.

The inauguration, which was chaired by Boss Mustapha, Secretary to the Government of the Federation, SGF, held on Tuesday in Abuja.

According to the SGF, the Diplomatic Missions around the world are currently faced with multifaceted challenges following, among others, the scale of perennial indebtedness they find themselves, which poses attendant damage to Nigeria’s integrity.

He also recalled that some cost saving measures taken by previous administrations in this regard including, reducing the number and size of missions, authorizing concurrent accreditation to other countries, enhancing and prioritizing budgetary releases to Missions, which did not live long.

While regretting the unfortunate short existence of the measure, Mustapha noted that the preliminary findings revealed that the root causes of the challenges were inter-woven and systemic in nature.

He noted that the Buhari-led administration realized 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, Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, The Federal Civil Service Commission.

Mustapha therefore stated that the challenges will have to be addressed holistically in short-, medium- and long-term basis, which are to be based on the timeline of three months with the following terms of reference.

• To 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;
• To identify and categorize 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 with a view to minimizing 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.

Leading the committee are Martin Uhomoibi as the Chairman, Sabiu Zakari as Vice Chairman, Iliyasu Agaka as the Secretary, while the members of the committee include Shehu Ibrahim, Beatrice Edodamen Jedy-Agba, Bulus Lolo, Saheed K. Y. Adelakun, Janet Olisa.

Other members are representative of the Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning; representative of the Auditor-General for the Federation; representative of the Accountant General of the Federation; representative of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation; representative of the Foreign Service Advisory Council; representative of the Federal Civil Service Commission; representative of National Intelligence Agency.

KN

Tags: Beatrice Edodamen Jedy-Agba Boss Mustapha Bulus Lolo Iliyasu Agaka Janet Olisa Martin Uhomoibi Sabiu Zakari Saheed K. Y. Adelakun Shehu Ibrahim