The Chairman of Nigerians in Diaspora Commission, Abike Dabiri-Erewa has decried the lack of office structure for the agency, which she said has done so much in the last five months since its inauguration.
Dabiri-Erewa said even though, the Commission is the youngest parastatal in the country, it has achieved notable milestones in its short existence, despite having enormous funding constraints.
She disclosed this while appearing before the House Committee on Diaspora Affairs on Tuesday, adding that the agency did all that it did from the N100 million take off grant approved by the President.
“We’re barely six months old because my confirmation spent 8 months at the Senate and eventually sailed through in May, even though the Secretary had resumed work before then. And we have done so much within these six months despite all odds. “We have nothing with regards to funding outside the N100m we got from Mr president as a take off.
“We got N400m in the 2019 budget and nothing has been released so far, but the Minister has promised to do something soon about it, and we are hoping she does that very quickly so that we can tidy up our commitments for the fiscal year”, she said.
The Chairman said Nigerians in diaspora are some of the most brilliant in the world and that “70 percent of medical doctors in the US who are foreigners are Nigerians, in the UK, the same thing.”
Speaking on what is being done to coordinate efforts by diasporans to contribute their expertise in health care and technology, she said there’s a scheme being worked out to handle concerns regarding medical services by Nigerians abroad.
“The Ministry has asked for a takeoff grant for a scheme that enables medical experts of Nigerian extraction to come in and render services to our people, and it would be self sustaining, what we need is just a takeoff grant.
“But in number of diaspora Nigerians, right now, we’re working with estimate and so we cannot tell the actual figure of Nigerians in diaspora. We will make effort to document them, and we have asked the states to join.
“States are now beginning to key into our vision with Anambra and Edo appointing Commissioners for Diaspora and about 4 others having Special Advisers on Diaspora Matters. And we told them to encourage their indigenes to remit money home”, she added.
Dabiri-Erewa also said the Commission is hoping that the National Assembly would also incorporate electronic voting to enable Nigerians abroad to participate in elections processes, adding that these are people who remit billions into the economy and should be given a voice in the leadership selection process.
Meanwhile, House Committee on Culture and Tourism called on the Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed to take a critical look at culture aspect of the Ministry with a view to making culture a veritable unifying factor in the country.
Chairman of the House Committee, Ogbeide Ihiama gave the directive to the Minister and heads of agencies under the Ministry during the presentation and defence of the 2020 Budget by the Minister.
He noted that the culture subhead of the yearly budget of the ministry is less than 200 million on annual basis and ask the Minister to ask the Federal Executive Council to either approve funds for it or scrap it
The PDP lawmaker said: “if a ministry can get less than N200m for the culture sector, it shows that the government is not serious about the sector. If Mr President is a farmer and does not understand culture, talk to him on that”
He informed that the House ‘ll set up a Committee to liase with the Federal Character Commission in order to address the issue of lack of personnel and funds for the culture sector.
The Committee while perusing the 2018 and 2019 budgets of the ministry discovered that 304 staff were disengage for several reasons by the Ministry and the personnel cost of N318 billion is intact and reoccurring
Mohammed who regretted that N200 million was chopped off on the budget allocation of the Ministry in 2019 by the budget Office however defended the 318 billion for personnel cost and other items in the budget.
He called for increase in funding of bilateral and multirateral organisations and added that the ministry would leverage on the comparative advantage Nigeria has on film, music and theatre to move the nation forward.
While defending the N384,943,407.00 billion budget of the Ministry, he said that N18 million and N21 million are earmarked for the ministry’s participating in UNESCO and the join Commission.
James Kwen, Abuja
