ABUJA—PRESIDENT Goodluck Jonathan, yesterday, assured that in line with his foreign policy reforms, Nigerian embassies and missions across the world are to be  restructured to meet current needs of government.

He spoke while laying the foundation stone of the ambassador’s residence and chancery building, in Sao Tome, on Saturday.

The President said the government was prepared to make Nigerian embassies and missions abroad impressive and representative of the true status of Nigeria.

Jonathan said: “One thing that has been disturbing me since I came on board  as vice-president and president, is that the offices and residences of our ambassadors in most countries are not quite impressive, some are very beautiful buildings, but lacked maintenance because of lack of funds.

”This is one of the reasons while when the Foreign Affairs Ministry wanted to upgrade some of our missions to full status of embassies, I said no, we must first upgrade the facilities we have  in our embassies before we talk about upgrading our missions”. 

The President regretted that before now “you see Nigerian embassies sharing wall with other countries, but our own will look a bit unkempt. You cannot blame the ambassadors, their staff or probably the funding, we are always having challenges in the way we do our budget but we are changing things now and we want to make sure that Nigerian embassies will reflect the new thinking of government and what we want them to look like”.

The President promised that henceforth “the residences of ambassadors, high commissioners and staff and even their offices must be befitting,” adding that the government will ensure that it “renovates all our facilities outside the country so that Nigerian will be proud of them”.

Jonathan congratulated Nigerians resident in Sao Tome and Principe, saying that from “the brief I got while coming here is that no Nigerian has been involved in any anti-social behaviour in this country. We want to commend you for that, we want to thank you for that and we want Nigerians  everywhere to emulate this”.

The President, who participated in the inauguration of the new president declared “we will continue to have that good relationship with this country. We have things in common. We have the common zone where we are supposed to manage our fisheries and mineral resources, together.”

He said:  “Sao Tome is  a country dear to us and very critical to Nigeria which is why I am particularly pleased that those of you who are here are not creating any problem for the government and that will encourage the robust relationship we want to create with this country.”