A former lawmaker who represented Kaduna Central at the Senate, Shehu Sani has bemoaned the moribund state of Nigerian embassies while enumerating solutions regarding the challenge.

Sani made his stance known during an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja on Sunday.

The lawmaker disclosed how most of the country’s embassies abroad have been rented without plans to buy houses for that purpose.

“I found out that we have been renting about 60 per cent of Nigerian embassies abroad, some existed far back as 1960 and we are still unable to buy a house in those countries.

“From my observation, diplomatic staffs have been fleecing this country in the name of paying rents; they prefer Nigeria to keep renting houses, rather than buying a building as an embassy.

“In the past, everything about the embassy is in the Foreign Affairs ministry, but during the era of Mrs Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Ambassadors go to the Minister of Finance for them to be funded.

As such, it left the foreign affairs ministry with little or no choice on the embassy other than posting of diplomatic staffs.

Everything about embassy should go back to the foreign affairs ministry; we should have targets, every year we should buy 10 buildings, so that in five to six years, we are no more renting,” Sani said.

He further suggested trading off some of the buildings currently in disuse in order to maximise finances being expended.

“There are some buildings that we may not need; we have to trade them off and put those ones away.

“I learned we have a residence for Nigeria’s permanent representatives in New York and that residence has not been used for decades.

“If that residence has not been used for decades, we have no reason to keep that building, we need to sell it off, use the proceeds and buy other properties in other countries,” he added.