A former United States Ambassador to Nigeria, Mr. Howard Jetter, has called for the establishment of the Nigerian Diaspora Investment Trust Fund as a medium by which Nigerian-Americans could invest in the Nigerian stock market.
Ambassador Jetter who made this call in Chicago during the annual convention of the Nigerians in Diaspora Organisation (NIDO) noted that the establishment of this Trust Fund should be made a top priority for the organisation.
He also said that individuals of impeccable integrity and honesty, with name recognition, must be associated with establishment of the Investment Trust Fund, and
stressed that the Diaspora Organisation could enlist the support of a well known brokerage or stock trading companies to establish the agency on NIDO’s behalf.
The former US envoy called on the director-general of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) to come to the US to help sell the idea to the Nigerian-American community when the investment trust fund was eventually unveiled.
He said that the NSE leadership must be fully involved with the project from its inception, by helping to work out the design and concept of the investment trust fund
and also by ensuring its full implementation. He declared that Nigeria was too big, bold and important not to have an American Diaspora that reflected its status in
Africa and in the international community, and added that the recent elections in the country, despite lingering imperfections, had set the country on a trajectory that it had not enjoyed since 1999.
“Nigeria is clearly now welcomed back into the community of democracies and this has profound implications for its domestic and foreign policies. What Nigeria says, does and how it reacts to the world events will have much more credibility than in the past,” he said.
He also advised the association to instigate a small board of political advisors to organise political actions on behalf of Nigeria.