Nigeria’s new President Muhammadu Buhari said his government was too broke to give all nominees to his cabinet a ministerial position and the country will be very lucky if it gets anything more than half of the 42 ministers that operated under the previous government.

Buhari  dropped hints that his government would prune the number of ministries in the government bureaucracy because Nigeria was broke and did not even have money to pay its civil servants.

“I cannot pay all ministers because the country is broke”, he told Channels Television.

“Nigeria cannot pay salaries. The Federal Government itself had to summon the governor of the Central Bank to see how it would pay salaries not to talk of the agreements we signed with foreign countries, counterpart funding and so on.”

Buhari said that he appointed 36 ministerial nominees to fulfill the spirit of the constitution and that some of the ministers may not be assigned portfolios, but they would sit at cabinet meetings.

Nigeria’s economy has come under pressure this year as oil prices, it main export commodity that earns the government  over 70 percent of its revenue, fell on the international market.

“There used to be 42 ministers but we will be lucky if we can have half of that now, others may not be substantive ministers but they will sit in the cabinet because that is what the constitution says and we cannot work outside the constitution,” he added.