Senate moves to upgrade Diaspora Commission to full-fledged Ministry

The Nigeria Senate has stated its readiness to upgrade Nigerian in Diaspora Commission (NIDCOM) to a full fledged Ministry.

Senate Committee Chairman on Diaspora and Non-governmental Organisation, Senator Michael Nnachi made this known at an interactive session with the Management of NIDCOM led by Hon. Abike Dabiri-Erewa on Thursday.

The Senate Committee appreciated the workload of NIDCOM and its critical responsibiliies in catering for millions of Nigerians living abroad, while the Chairman asked the Legal department of NIDCOM to liaise with the National Assembly with a view to amending the Act that established it.

The Committee further suggested that the Technical Aids Corps should be under the direct supervision of NIDCOM in order to strengthen their operations.

Senator Nnachi 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 it’s mandate.

“We believe that your agency has a lot of responsibilities to the Nigerian 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.”

Earlier, the Chairman of the Commission, Hon. Abike Dabiri-Erewa who advocated for the upgrade of the Commission to a full Ministry argued that it would afford the agency to meet up with its statutory obligations to millions of citizens in foreign countries.

The NIDCOM boss had earlier told the panel that the agency was having serious challenges in meeting with it’s mandate due to poor funding.

Dabiri-Erewa specifically said her office was finding it difficult to help some Nigerian in critical situation in foreign lands because there were no provision for foreign trips for her officials.

The Chairman also said government had yet to reimburse her for the three trips she recently embarked upon on behalf of Nigeria.

Dabiri-Erewa said, “It is in the act that we should have five diasporean offices, but we don’t have money. It’s in the act but we don’t have money.

“Some diasporeans help us out when we travel. The diasporea is the most important thing for Nigeria right now and I can tell you that we havent even engaged 10 percent of our diaspora.

“What we always do is that we have been using technology. We plead to the National Assembly to assist us so that we could have continental offices so that we would be able to have direct access to Nigerians in the Disapora.

“Our inability to have offices abroad is not allowing us to engage 10 per cent of Nigerians in the Diaspora.”