‘Why Nigeria shouldn’t shut down 80 embassies’

The Federal Government has been warned that the plan to shut down 80 out of 110 Nigerian embassies will compromise and diminish the country’s international diplomatic posture before the world.

Founder and Executive Director of Hope for Niger Delta Campaign based in The Netherlands, Sunny Ofehe, who gave this warning, said the Federal Government must to act and save the country from global disgrace.

Ofehe noted that Nigeria has a huge Diaspora population living within Africa, Europe, the Americas, Asia, Caribbean and the Middle East, hence the need for these embassies to serve the nation’s citizens and promote her core socio-economic values around the world.

“Any government who understands how Nigeria is respected around the world will not starve its foreign missions of funds,” he said.

He pointed out the role of Nigerian diplomatic missions abroad is to function as the channel of communication between the Nigerian government and that of the host country, to act as the official representative of Nigeria’s interest in general and in respect of specific public agencies with local interests in the host country.

He, therefore, described arguments made to replace embassies with modern technology as laughable.

“In Switzerland, the United States (U.S.) has three ambassadors whereas we have only one who covers the embassy and the United Nations (UN),” he said.