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NIGERIA NEEDS A DIASPORA COMMISSION(Daily Trust (Nigeria) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Dr. Sule Yakubu Bassi is the Secretary, Nigeria Diaspora and Alumni Network (NiDAN) and Director, Global Distance Learning Institute, Abuja. He was former Director General, Directorate of Technical Cooperation in Africa. In this interview, he speaks about activities of the organisation among other issues. Excerpts: What is Nigeria Diaspora and Alumni Network (NiDAN) all about and intends to achieve? NiDAN stands for the Nigerian Diaspora and Alumni Network. It is a network of Nigerians who are in the Diaspora, who have been out there for at least one year and have something, either in terms of resource or skill, to contribute to the development of Nigeria. NiDAN was set up on 2nd October 2010 as a network of Nigerians who are willing to serve in Nigeria - either to work with the Nigerian government directly or to engage in the private sector or community development. It is registered with the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) as a trust. It has it board of trustees and then as of today it has about 600 members on its list across all the continents of the world and cutting across all professions. The good thing with Nigeria is that there is no profession that you will not find Nigerians excelling in. So NiDAN was set up as an advocacy group to advocate that Nigerians outside can engage in the development of the country. It is also a network for those outside who want to know who to engage when they come home as they have peculiar challenges; challenges because they left home for some time. There are environmental challenges, cultural, governmental, bureaucratic challenges that when you are coming back to re-engage with Nigeria, somebody has to specifically guide you. So NiDAN is there to handle such kinds of issues. It is a membership group. When you come you fill the form, you are vetted for integrity. NiDAN partners with government and other public corporations and individuals but it does not take conservation from government. How much has NiDAN been able to achieve in its four years of existence? NiDAN has achieved quite lot. As of today, I can tell you NiDAN is one of the Diaspora groups that is on ground in Nigeria. NiDAN has carried out so many social responsibility activities in terms of youth development and employment fairs. It has carried out corporate social responsibility activities in some schools; gave scholarships to students; capacity building; training for our youth; and the like. NiDAN members are part of the larger Diaspora community. The Diaspora community in Nigeria is upwards of 40 million, when you look at the numbers; those in Africa, in Europe, Asia, America, in Australia and all over. Here in Nigeria, NIDAN members are involved in all sectors and to cap it up, there are vice chancellors from the diaspora. There are also some of our diaspora people that have been appointed as ministers and several others that have contributed their skills. And when you come to home remittances, the World Bank estimates what has come through official channels is upwards of $22 billion per annum. When you compare that to total foreign direct investment to Nigeria of $8.9billion per annum, you know that the diaspora brings in three times what comes in as foreign direct investment (FDI) into the country. Can this amount be better harnessed if there is proper coordination? We have thought about that. But for now if any diaspora person arrives at the airport in Nigeria there is no government office that directly deals with such person. It is very unfortunate, but the National Assembly is ahead of the executive in the sense that the House of Representatives has a special, dedicated committee on diaspora chaired by Mrs. Abike Dabiri-Erewa. But on the side of the executive, if a diaspora person lands here in Abuja, it is difficult to know which particular office to go to and deal with issues that concern him. That was why NiDAN was set up to stand in the gap, but it can do much more. We have been championing the cause for the setting-up of a National Diaspora Commission. It would basically do advocacy, to convince the diaspora to get engaged and not to forget home, while they are out there, to get engaged with development in Nigeria. It would be like a clearing house when diaspora people come in terms of acclimatising them back into our environment; guiding them on how to do things, because if you leave this country for three weeks, when you come back, you behave more like a foreigner. So you need to be debriefed, you need to acclimatise, you need to have a place where you can ask basic questions and get involved with the development. Part of the ideals of NiDAN is to promote Nigeria's global image and engagement. How much of this have you achieved? At NiDAN, we meet every month, now we made it every other month to discuss with various diaspora individuals that are members of NiDAN in terms of opportunities, corporate social responsibility, even basic advocacy needs. We also engage with Nigeria diaspora all over the world really in terms of letting them know the opportunities that are available in the country and the resources and the skills and many have benefitted. Like I said, the diaspora is a dynamic group and getting them to re-engage with the country is like triple jump, where you have a hop, step and jump. Because of their families and other engagements they have out there, they are not going to abandon everything, jettison everything and come back home. We need them also there. While they are there, what can they contribute in the country? So they need to be properly briefed, told how to go about investments, bringing their skills in terms of helping institutions here. Recently, NiDAN organised a security conference, what has that got to do with the body? NiDAN operates in committees. We have about 15 development committees and one of them is the security committee. Without security, there cannot be development, so wherever you are talking about development, you must also talk about issues of security and one of the issues that have been on the front-burner is that several of our members have come into the country and have been kidnapped in some of the states. With the insurgency, armed robbery and things like that and particularly because of the insurgency, some of our members are security experts, so we decided that to celebrate this year's national diaspora day, we should have a security summit. We came out with a communique which we took to the Chief of Defence Staff so that it could filter into the security system, especially with the issue of insurgency Nigeria is facing now. On the issue of integration in Africa, is Nigeria really taking into grip it leadership role in the continent? I think Nigeria over the years is taking the lead in championing integration in Africa in terms of economic integration, developmental integration and also technical cooperation; Nigeria has been the champion. And really when you look at it, with the divine endowments the country has, it cannot shy away from being in the vanguard for leading Africa. I have a personal view about this, because you know at some point, the government created the Ministry of Cooperation and Integration in Africa and over 30 African countries followed suit and created same ministry. Unfortunately, we merged our Ministry of Cooperation and Integration with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and up till today, we have not been able to see the advantage of that particular merger because if you go to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, you find there three ministers and when a bureaucracy becomes that big, it can get unwieldy and if you are not careful, you lose some of the objectives. But there is a minister in charge of cooperation and integration but he is a minister of state in the ministry. Issues of cooperation and integration, though they are part of diplomacy, they are little different from diplomacy and ECOWAS, which is our integration platform in West Africa, recommends for countries to have dedicated cooperation and integration focal point where issues of cooperation of integration could be easily handled. Some of the issues are technical, for example, Ebola. It is a cooperation and integration health issue. It just took Patrick Sawyer from Liberia and the implication is grief. We definitely cannot afford not to lead. If we don't lead in West Africa, who else will, if we don't lead in Africa, who will? So really, I think that the feeling in the past years, since that merger took place, is that Nigeria is not in the front seat leading issues of cooperation and integration. Nigeria cannot yank that leadership position God has divinely placed on it. Where do we see NiDAN in the next few years? For now, there are advocacy issues we are pushing. Apart from calling for the setting-up of the diaspora commission, we are also advocating for diaspora voting; unfortunately recently, the chairman of INEC, Professor Attahiru Jega said he does not have the infrastructure to allow for diaspora voting yet, but we feel that is a key issue. We also are advocating for the involvement of qualified diaspora Nigerians in both governance and in the private sector and NiDAN will always be a platform for that. |