…commission chair laments poor funding
The Senate has called for an upgrade of the Nigerian In Diasporan Commission to a ministry in order to meet its obligations to millions of citizens in foreign countries.
The lawmakers made the call on Thursday during an engagement between the Senate Committee on the Diaspora and Nongovernmental Organisations and the officials of the NIDCOM, led by its Chairman, Mrs. Abike Dabiri-Erewa.
The NIDCOM boss had earlier told the panel that the agency was having serious challenges in meeting its mandate due to poor funding.
Dabiri-Erewa specifically said her office was finding it difficult to help some Nigerians in critical situations in foreign lands because there were no provisions for foreign trips for her officials.
The Chairman also said the government had yet to reimburse her for the three trips she recently embarked upon on behalf of Nigeria.
She also lamented that the money allocated to the agency was too little and she had to fund a lot of trips personally if she needed to travel unavoidably.
Dabiri-Erewa said NIDCOM got a budget of N40m for salaries and they had to fund a lot of their activities personally and collaborations with some international agencies like the European Union, International Organisation for Migration and World Bank.
She also told the Senate that despite the fact that their Act stated that they have at least five diaspora offices; they do not even have offices in Nigeria because funds were hardly released to the organisation despite the herculean task before them.
Dabiri-Erewa said, “It is in the act that we should have five diasporan offices, but we don’t have money. It’s in the Act but we don’t have money.
“Some diasporans help us out when we travel. In fact, many of the interventions we did were usually done when the President travelled, we met with the diaspora on such journeys.”
The agency chairman also noted that the Diaspora was the most important thing for Nigeria right now, “and I can tell you that we haven’t even engaged 10 per cent of our diaspora,” she noted.
“We plead with the National Assembly to assist us so that we can have continental offices; so that we would be able to have direct access to Nigerians in the diaspora.
“Our inability to have offices abroad is not allowing us to engage 10 per cent of Nigerians in the diaspora.”
The panel, in its reaction, noted that the responsibilities placed on the NIDCOM were more than what an agency could handle.
Members of the panel also suggested that the Technical Aids Corps should be under the direct supervision of NIDCOM.
The Chairman of the Senate panel, Senator Michael Nnachi, asked the legal department of NIDCOM to liaise with the National Assembly with a view to amending the Act that established it.
He said, “There is the need to upgrade NIDCOM to a full-fledged ministry. The legal department should start work towards the review of the Act.
“The National Assembly is ready to support and work with you to make your agency a full-fledged ministry
“That would enable you to have adequate funding to sustain you and empower the agency to carry out its mandate. We believe that your agency has a lot of responsibilities to the Nigerians in the diaspora. We need to encourage them to come and invest here.
“NIDCOM has a lot of roles to play. The leadership of the National Assembly will be interested in you delivering on your mandate.”
