According to high-level sources in the administration, President Bola Tinubu will soon name ambassadors to the country’s diplomatic embassies in key countries.
People are getting more and more worried that the country’s diplomatic presence overseas has suffered because there haven’t been any real envoys for a long time, especially in important strategic countries like the United States during the purported Christian genocide debate.
According to Sunday PUNCH, Tinubu invited back all of Nigeria’s ambassadors from 76 embassies, 22 high commissioners, and 11 consulates around the world in September 2023 to review the country’s foreign policy.
But more than two years into the current administration, the process of choosing new ambassadors has been delayed many times.
Since there haven’t been any substantive envoys, chargés d’affaires or senior consular officers have been in charge of the missions.
In April 2025, insiders close to the president told our reporter that the federal government had finished checking out the people who had been nominated to be ambassadors. This included background checks and security checks by the right authorities.
Tinubu had said before that the delay was due to the complicated political factors that go into making such selections.
“I couldn’t hire everyone at once, so thank you for your patience.” I still have some open ambassadorial seats that a lot of people want. “But it’s not easy to stitch those names together,” he stated in September when members of The Buhari Organization visited the Presidential Villa.
Several officials from the administration indicated last week that the president had told them to do a “final cleanup” of the list before it was released.
One of the officials said that some people on the list had died and others were no longer eligible for nomination since they had retired since the President forwarded the list to the Senate.
The person claimed that the Upper Chamber sent the envoy list back to the presidency because it needed to be cleaned up.
In separate discussions with our reporter, top aides who were involved in the process indicated that the cleansing was almost done and that only envoys representing large countries would be chosen.
“The last step is almost done. The president is determined to make the nominations, and the news will come out in the next few weeks. I wouldn’t want to name two. A source said, “However, only ambassadors to major countries will be appointed.”
Another high-ranking official in the president claimed that the list would be made public before the end of November.
“The president said they should fix the list. I bet it will be ready by the end of the month. It’s not worth guessing. The official remarked, “It will be officially announced when it is ready.”
Allocations without representatives
It was learned that the appointments were delayed in part because there wasn’t enough money—estimated at $1 billion—to pay foreign service officers’ back pay, clear up a backlog of overhead costs, replace old cars, and fix up embassy buildings.
Earlier this year, Yusuf Tuggar, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, also admitted that there wasn’t enough money. He said that sending envoys without the right tools would be a waste of time.
The federal government set aside N2.1 billion in the 2025 budget to cover the costs of sending and returning ambassadors and officials.
Another N53 billion was suggested for fixing up 103 foreign embassies, including chanceries, staff quarters, ambassadors’ homes, office furnishings, and official cars.
The proposed amounts were N554 million for Abidjan, N812 million for Banjul, N555 million for Brazzaville, N558 million for Port of Spain, N576 million for Caracas, N624 million for Kingston, N567 million for Libreville, N409 million for Buenos Aires, and N899 million for Niamey, among others.
The Office of the Accountant General of the Federation sent a letter on July 3, 2025, that said the Tinubu administration gave $54 million to help run the country’s 103 embassies and high commissions.
The paper says that $46.14 million was set aside for overhead costs, $9.58 million for staff costs, and $282,829 for other charges.
But as the year comes to an end and no real ambassadors have been chosen, more and more people are worried about what will happen to the money set aside for missions that are still running without confirmed envoys.
The House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs called Tuggar and Heads of embassies to testify in October about how Nigeria’s foreign embassies would use the money they were given in 2025.
The committee, in a letter dated July 24, 2025, and signed by its Chairman, Oluwole Oke, used Sections 88 and 89 of the 1999 Constitution (as amended) to ask for specific records of how the missions spent the money.
Earlier this year, the Oke-led committee started looking into a contract controversy involving the suspected misuse of $2 million set aside for fixing up the Nigeria Permanent Representative’s home at the United Nations headquarters in New York.
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