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  • Updated: November 03, 2020

Nigerian Embassy In Hungary Owes Rent, Landlord Threatens Evacuation Of Staff

Nigerian Embassy In Hungary Owes Rent, Landlord Threatens Ev

The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Geoffrey Onyeama, said that landlord of the building housing the Nigerian Embassy in Hungary is threatening to "throw them out".

This was disclosed Tuesday by the minister during a 2021 budget defence of the ministry in Abuja.

He said that this is an ongoing challenge that the country's mission faces across the world.

He appealed for a cut down on the number of international organisations that the country belongs to in a bid to trim spendings.

Onyeama said, as quoted by the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), “Just on Monday, the ambassador in Hungary called to say they are going to throw them out from the chancery building. That the landlord is coming and that they do not have the money to pay.

“Then this exchange rate differential with the CBN is really something we need to address once and for all.

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“It is not so easy, all of these things are computed in naira and all the payments abroad are in dollars and once the exchange rate is changed, it never goes the other way, it always goes up, it never comes down vis-a-vis the dollar. This means immediate shortfall for all our missions.

“We are owing a lot, and in the federal executive council (FEC), there is a process to rationalise and cut down on the international organisations we belong to.

“This is because we are just owing monies left and right and it is not even good for the image of the country.

“A lot of our missions are eyesores and it is just a huge embarrassment to the country that we can have missions in such terrible conditions.

“We have been receiving letters from the national assembly forwarding to us various claims and judgement and asking us to pay them.

“We have a big challenge with clothing allowances, as you know, all officers in our missions from grade level 7 and above are entitled to $2,500 clothing allowance per annum.

“In the 2021 budget, about 1,312 officers will be expecting the payment of these allowances and if you take at the CBN official rate, we are looking at N1.2 billion.

“What we have available is N762 million for that, to able to pay the clothing allowances, we still need an additional sum of N500 million.”

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