The controversies from Members of the National Assembly over the proposal to establish the Nigerian Diaspora Commission and to ensure Diaspora Voting Rights for Nigerians living abroad may have been laid to rest as officials used the just concluded annual general convention of the Nigerians In the Diaspora to clear the knotty aspects of the two Bills.
First to speak was Honourable Abike Dabiri-Erewa, Chairperson of the House of Representatives Committee on Diaspora Affairs who stated that there were differences between the Nigerian Diaspora Commission and Diaspora Voting Rights.
While she accepted that both issues had caused a lot of controversies among Honourable Members of the House of Representatives, Abike Dabiri said: “Some people in the Assembly said that Diaspora Commission was Diaspora Voting, and most of them are the people that are totally against Diaspora Voting so we had to just wait to explain to every member that this is different and i am happy now that they are begining to understand it better”
Dabiri also appealed to Nigerians in the Diaspora to lobby the Honourable Members from their individual Constituencies in the National Assembly to work together for the realisation of the Diaspora Commission before the end of the 7th Assembly.
Her words: “We want every branch of NIDO, like NIDO in America, NIDO in Europe and others to work together with the House Committee on Diaspora Affairs to set up the Diaspora Commission. We need a lot of inputs from Nigerians living abroad to be able to realise this goal. The Diaspora Commission will be established but the only problem is the question of where we are going to situate the Commission”
“I want to inform you that it doesn’t matter where the Commission is sited. What matters is who drives the Commission. That Bill says that the Commission will have Nigerians from every Continent represented. America will have three members, Europe will have two or three and other Continents across the world will have representatives on the Board of the Commission”
“We passed the Bill during the 6th?Assembly but the Senate could not pass it before we rounded up the Assembly. That is not a big deal because there were some Bills that the Senate passed that we could not pass too. Now, the Bill has come to the 7th?Assembly and we are in the process of continuing from where it stops”
In his own submission, the Nigeria’s Ambassador to the United States, Professor Adebowale Adefuye, said that Nigerians living in the diaspora have a lot of roles to play as a support for the government to ensure a quick establishment of the Diaspora Commission.
The envoy said that there were best technologies that would ensure that voting from the diaspora were rigging-free, stressing that Diaspora Voting was possible for Nigeria to do since some other countries like South Africa practise it.
Adefuye, however, stated that the Diaspora Commission could be sited anywhere between the Presidency and the Foreign Affairs Ministry, noting that the Nigerian Embassies abroad would still play critical roles to ensure that the Commission realised the primary objectives for its establishment.
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