The Federal Government on Tuesday said Nigerians in the Diaspora remitted about $25 billion into the nation’s coffers in 2019.
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Nigerian Diaspora Commission, Mrs. Abike Dabiri-Erewa, stated this while briefing State House correspondent after meeting behind closed doors with President Muhammadu Buhari at the presidential villa, Abuja.
She said that the Commission had started engaging the National Assembly to see to the possibility of Nigerians abroad participating in the country’s future elections.
She told journalists that she was at the State House to brief President Buhari on progresses so far made by the Commission since it was inaugurated in May 2019.
She appealed to governors of the states that had yet to intervene in the plights of their indigenes that had recently returned from troubled sojourn to come in with needed interventions, said her Commission had done a lot in giving succour to many Nigerians who had been stranded abroad.
On remitances by Nigerians in the Diaspora, she said besides the most common informal financial transactions going on within families and interpersonal, the larger transactions amounted to the tune of $25 billion, hoping it would get better in the coming year.
According to her, “For 2019, we are dealing with about $25 billion as remittances from Nigerians in the Diaspora. We hoping it could get better. There are even areas that are not even captured. The foremost remittances are not even captured; the $500 to your brothers, to your sisters. Beyond remittances, there are a lot more than Nigerians in the Diaspora will do for their country. We hope it gets better, we hope that Nigerians in the Diaspora continue to help in resuscitating the Nigerian economy.
“We are putting a team in place to work out modalities for the Diaspora Trust Fund. We are in the process of planning it and engaging Nigerians in the Diaspora as to how it can be done. A few countries, like Ethiopia, have a Diaspora Investment Fund, Nigeria should not be an exception. We are working at it. We are hoping we can get everything set in the first quarter of next year.”
On the efforts to get Nigerians in the Diaspora to participate in future elections, Dabiri-Erewa said “we’ll be engaging the National Assembly to look into the issue of Diaspora voting. Nigerians in the Diaspora believe they should be able to vote and remitting so much to the country, contributing so much to the economy, we believe they should be able to vote. So we hope we can work with the parliament to amend the relevant laws to make it possible for people in the Diaspora to vote”.
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