Reps committee to revisit diaspora voting bill

The House of Representatives Committees on Diaspora on Thursday assured to re-introduce and quicken the passage into law the Diaspora Voting Bill which was rejected during the Constitution amendment exercise by the National Assembly Joint Committee on the Review of the 1999 Constitution.

Chairman of the Committee, Hon Tolulope Akande-Shadipe, gave the assurance when the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer CEO of Nigerians in the Diaspora Commission (NIDCOM), Dr Abike Dabiri-Erewa, appeared before the Committee to defend the commission’s 2023 budget.

Hon Akande-Shadipe said that the House must eventually pass the rejected bill because that was the direction the entire world was going.

According to her, “We will be back with the bill. They are Nigerians and they have the right to vote in Nigerian elections. The modalities and the issues that were raised the last time will be resolved and we will come back to it.

“Many citizens of Nigeria are leaving outside the country and the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) is complicit in this issue of illegal migration. Once the immigration authorities are complicit, we are only making notice.”

The lawmaker further revealed that the committee was also looking at the issue of people of Nigerian descent who currently are not Nigerians but want to return home after DNA tests conducted by the authorities had proven that they have ties to Nigeria.

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In her presentation, Dabiri-Erewa urged Nigerians to stop migrating to other countries if they don’t have jobs there.

According to her, “80 percent of prisoners in Dubai are Nigerians who went there without waiting jobs for them and so they sooner than later got into trouble.”

She stressed the need for a stronger multi-sector collaboration between the NIS, the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP) and other agencies to stop the trend.

She added that the Nigerian authorities needed to put their house in order so as to stop the citizens of the country from moving out to other countries in droves.