Honourable Betty Apiafi is a member of the House of Representatives representing Abua Odual/Ahoada East Federal Constituency of Rivers State. She is the Vice-Chairman of the House Committee on Diaspora Issues. The lawmaker who was recently in the United States to attend the launch of the Rivers State Women Association in America, spoke with ABIODUN OLUWAROTIMI on the present position of the Diaspora Voting Rights, women’s empowerment among other issues.?
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You are the Vice-Chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Diaspora. Can you tell us the challenges that the Committee is facing as regards the Diaspora Voting Rights Bill?
Democracy is actually evolving in Nigeria and people are just scared about a lot of things. We have presented the issue of the Diaspora Voting Rights. We have actually presented the Bill to amend the Electoral Act to provide room for Nigerians living abroad to have voting rights but the response we got was not very good so we decided to withdraw it for now and then start from the beginning and the beginning really is to actually work on the agency that will take care of Nigerians who are in diaspora in the first place. It is clear that the Nigerians in diaspora are not well taken care of under the office of the Secretary to the Federal Government where the issues of the diaspora are being handled. When we have a functioning agency that will be seeing to the affairs of Nigerians in diaspora, we can then be having accurate information about our people abroad. Maybe we will start from having a database of Nigerians living in diaspora. If we start from the beginning, that idea will give Nigerians more confidence but the challenge we are having right now is that most people believe that elections may be rigged in favour of the government in power if we have diaspora voting rights in the country.
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You are an advocate of women empowerment. Can you tell us the reasons for this cause you are fighting?
I am sure you know how difficult our society is today and you know that most of our traditional institutions have actually favoured male children. Even in our laws, male children get greater inheritance than the female children. But things are changing now because Nigeria belongs to a lot of international organizations like the United Nations and the African Union. A lot of decisions have been taken regarding issues concerning women. So what we are trying to do is to make sure that Nigeria emulates other countries where the rights of women are not being tampered with. We want to make sure that Nigeria, being a signatory to some of these treaties regarding women’s rights, abides by these protocols and treaties that it is a signatory to. You know I am a member of the Pan-African Parliament, a legislative arm of the African Union and being a member of this arm actually gives me a better idea of so many of these treaties and protocols. Like the last Assembly of the parliament, after the election, all we did was to put together all the protocols into one book and then present it so that the federal government could understand that Nigeria had signed a lot of treaties and protocols regarding women’s rights.
Unfortunately, the process of domesticating the protocols on the issues of women in Nigeria is a bit complex because we do not have enough provisions. Most of the time, we just sign and then leave the documents but they are now being brought to the National Assembly for them to be domesticated and become parts of our laws. We have to understand now that women issues in the political process of Nigeria must be part of the country’s Electoral Act because Nigeria has signed a protocol of that nature with international organizations. We must have 50-50 participation right among the men and women in Nigeria. It is sad that we just sign these treaties and protocols but we do not use them in Nigeria. Those are parts of the issues that we are trying to fight to make sure that whatever that is agreed with international organizations should be implemented in Nigeria. We have to abide by these treaties on women because Nigeria is the leading light of Africa and it is a shame if we do not do what we pledge with other nations to do. Going back to the rural areas, I actually come from the Niger Delta and there you really see what the women go through. I want to say that women deserve a better place in Nigerian politics because they are the majority in terms of voting.
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You belong to several committees in the House of Representatives. Can you discuss some of the major priorities of some of the committees including the changes you have been able to effect in your constituency?
I belong to several committees. Because of the challenges we are having on security issues in the Niger Delta, I decided to join some of these committees on security like the committees on National Security, Defense and Agriculture. When I won election in my federal constituency, my own local government did not have electricity so the first thing I did was to make sure that the entire local government was electrified because that was the agreement I had with the elders of the area at the time I was coming out to run for the election. The governor also pushed for the electrification of about nine communities while I worked with the NNDC to push for some as well. When we went to commission these in October, we have been able to electrify almost all the communities in the local government. We still have some other communities left behind and I will make sure I relate with the NDDC to get all of them electrified. After this, we will start training the women on proper preservations because in the local government, women are still living the traditional way. They do not know how to preserve their food. They cook everyday because they do not know how to preserve food. So we have to start training them on how to preserve food.
I know that electricity has brought different kinds of business opportunities to the area. Apart from this, we have started working on health care. We have ensured that some health centers are built and also the federal ministry of health has developed a lot of health centers in my area. I did a lot of MDG projects in my community. I have set up a lot of libraries that are close to schools. What we intend to do now is to have internet facilities in some of those libraries because in Nigeria now, employment is basically online so the people need internet facilities to do all these. We want them to be able to use the internet without the need to go to Port Harcourt.
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Can you talk about the activities of the House Committee on Diaspora?
Yes, we are planning to re-present the Bill on Diaspora Voting Rights before the end of this year. We have been talking to a lot of our colleagues and we are very sure that it is going to scale through this time around. We are very interested in the diaspora voting rights and the progress that Nigerians living abroad are making to develop our country. Look at the case of India: India makes a lot of money from Indians in diaspora. We had an encounter with the Indian High Commissioner and we are actually sending a delegation to India to study more of diaspora issues. We intend to take a few things from India and some other countries in order to know how to deal with diaspora issues. If you are a Nigerian in diaspora, you do not really need to come home if there is no need but if we see that you are a technical person, we will invite you to come and contribute to the development of the nation but we need to have the Nigerians in diaspora realize that Nigeria is their country. One of the decisions passed to the African Union during the last African Diaspora Summit in Johannesburg was to make Diaspora the 6th region in Africa so that the people in diaspora can be more involved in the decision making in the AU. We want them to be able to participate in many African countries and if we are going that way, diaspora will be on the front burner of African politics. Nigerians in diaspora have to be well prepared for the coming changes in the entire diaspora programmes coming up.
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