The chairman of senate committee on Diaspora and Non Governmental Organisation (NGOs), Senator Victor Umeh (LP, Anambra Central) has said Diaspora remittances in the last one year was put at $22billion.
He noted that the amount is not small in flow, saying those remittances contributed to aggregate amount of dollars available to Nigeria economy.
“Imagine those $22bn did not come in and we are looking for dollars. Dollar would have gone very much higher than the present rate against the naira”.
Umeh made the observation on Tuesday at an interactive session with the management of Nigerians in Diaspora Commission (NiDCOM) led by its chairman, Abike Dabiri-Erewa.
He emphasised that this in-flow of $22bn is a major boost to the foreign exchange earnings to the country “and what we need to do is to encourage them”.
According to Umeh, the fall of the naira has been augmented by the in flow of the Nigerians in diaspora.
“From our interaction with the commission, we have identified clearly the challenges they have in terms of funding, they need to be properly funded to be able to work properly.
“Even the National Assembly joint committee on diaspora, they need to be involved in the activities of the commission. Our Target is to mobilise Nigerians in Diaspora to partner with Nigerian government to drive key programmes of government towards development” he said.
He explained that Nigerians are holding exalting positions in a lot of businesses globally. He however bemoaned that what is lacking is harnessing them. “These are Nigerians living in diaspora, so we need to go and look at them and bring them”.
“We encourage Nigerians living abroad to be law abiding, let them observe the protocol and laws of these host countries so that they will be free from imprisonment and harassment.
“There is dignity in labour you can work and earn a good living. So we as a committee are very much interested in Nigerians doing legitimate businesses in various organizations and corporations across the globe so that we can harness their potentials and then bring them to government of Nigeria. So that we benefit from the positions they occupy in various sectors in civilised countries. And this commission is convinced that it has a major role to play in advancing the cause of Nigerians. Because the Nigerians outside are so many in number and they are very much exposed.
“They know what is been done in civilised countries where they live, they can bring such culture to Nigeria and more importantly bring their business partners to come and do business in Nigeria. That is the way we can help and grow our economy too. So we want to go in search of these people wherever they are” Umeh added.
Earlier, Dabiri-Erewa highlighted the challenges of the commission to include funding and office accommodation among others.
