As Nigeria quits 90 bodies
The Federal Government announced its resolve last week to withdraw Nigeria from the membership of 90 international organizations “to which it has financial commitments.” The announcement was made on Wednesday last week by Minister of Finance Mrs. Kemi Adeosun, who spoke to reporters soon after a Federal Executive Council meeting presided over by President Muhammadu Buhari.
According to the Finance Minister, Nigeria is a member of 310 international bodies to which it has financial commitments. Adeosun put Nigeria’s annual commitment to all the international organizations at $70 million. Nigeria is currently in arrears in the payment of the dues and fees owed to these organisations. We currently owe them about $200 million in back pay, Adeosun said.
What was most clear from FEC’s decision was that it was essentially a financial one, driven by the need to cut down on the huge payments that we are required to make to so many international organisations in hard currency. In the days when the treasury was liquid the government did not seem to realise the huge burden it had brought upon itself and the country. These days however, after five straight quarters of economic recession and the steep decline in government revenues, especially foreign exchange earnings, government is forced to look again at this area of likely waste.
The first question to ask is what are the 310 international organisations that this country has financial obligations to and how it came about that we signed up for membership of so many organisations. We have at present less than 30 federal ministries which means that on average, each ministry signed up for membership of at least ten foreign bodies with financial implications. It is important for Nigerians to know how we get to become a member of an international organisation. Is the process properly controlled by the presidency, is it always approved by FEC, or has just any minister, agency head or ambassador the power to take this country into a foreign body and run back to the treasury for the payment of dues? For, if the process was controlled by the presidency and carefully monitored by the Foreign Ministry, how did we get to sign up to so many organisations?
Minister Adeosun neither disclosed the 310 international bodies to which Nigeria has financial commitments nor did she reveal the 90 of them from which we are withdrawing. This is not good enough. The public should be allowed to know and to make an input into this decision. All Nigerians were surprised by the large number of the groups to which we regularly or irregularly make payments. Yet, the ones the public knows about through regular activity are probably no more than two dozen. These include the obviously critical ones such as United Nations, ECOWAS, African Union, OPEC, Lake Chad Basin Commission, World Bank, IMF, African Development Bank and key UN agencies such as UNDP, UNESCO, WHO and FAO.
There are also international bodies to which our membership is necessary because they control certain technical areas, such as ICAO in the aviation industry, WTU in the telecom industry and ILO on the labour front. There is however a lot of room for abuse through membership of frivolous bodies in certain sectors, such as in sports. While CAF and FIFA and other bodies in their league are important to Nigeria, it could turn out by the time the full list is publicised that Nigeria is a paying member of the international bodies of sports that are non-existent in Nigeria such as skiing, water polo, beach soccer and fencing. We must also criticise the National Assembly for approving budgets that include payments to many of these international bodies without proper scrutiny and without appropriate oversight to ensure that we get value for money. Finally, we think the 90 groups from which we are quitting is too few. Please search carefully and add another hundred.