By NDCfC Office of Strategy and Global Affairs
The Nigeria Diaspora Coalition for Change (NDCfC) is deeply concerned about a troubling pattern in which the Federal Government appears eager to celebrate Nigerians in the diaspora when it needs their money, investments, expertise, and global connections, yet remains unwilling to give those same citizens a meaningful voice in the country’s political process. For years, diaspora participation has been reduced to repeated promises, yielding little tangible progress.
Now, as another large delegation of senior government officials prepares to travel to Canada for the Nigeria Diaspora Investment Economic Conference (NIDEC 2026), Nigerians abroad have every right to ask the question successive administrations have repeatedly sidestepped.
When will Nigeria become as interested in the diaspora’s vote as it is in the diaspora’s wallet?
The NDCfC supports every sincere and credible effort to attract investment into Nigeria because we want Nigeria to prosper, create jobs, expand opportunities, strengthen its institutions, and improve the standard of living for its people. We recognize and welcome the enormous capital, knowledge, expertise, technology, innovation, and entrepreneurial capacity Nigerians in the Diaspora can contribute to national development. But our patriotism must never be interpreted as consent to disenfranchisement. Citizenship cannot be reduced to a one-way transaction in which the Nigerian state eagerly solicits the dollars, expertise, investments, and sacrifices of its citizens abroad while simultaneously denying them the fundamental democratic right to participate in choosing the government that governs them. Nigeria cannot have it both ways.
The Nigerian Diaspora cannot be treated as citizens when their resources are needed and as outsiders when their constitutional and democratic rights are demanded. This contradiction becomes even more troubling amid persistent allegations of reckless management of public resources, institutional dysfunction, and the creation or deployment of questionable governmental structures that allegedly serve political or administrative interests rather than the urgent developmental needs of millions of Nigerians living in poverty.
We reject the notion that Nigeria should become an investment marketplace without first becoming a stronger democracy. Diaspora Nigerians are not merely sources of foreign exchange. They are citizens, stakeholders, investors, professionals, entrepreneurs, innovators, scholars, parents, community builders, and custodians of a national identity that transcends geographical boundaries. Their money should not be used to purchase citizenship, because citizenship already confers rights. The relationship between Nigeria and its Diaspora must therefore move beyond extraction toward partnership, inclusion, accountability, and mutual responsibility. If the government genuinely wants Diaspora capital to accelerate national transformation, it must build the institutional confidence, democratic credibility, transparency, rule of law, and political inclusion necessary to sustain that investment.
Nigeria must not ask its Diaspora to finance a democracy from which they are deliberately excluded. We want investment. We want innovation. We want development. We want a prosperous Nigeria. But we also want democracy, and we will not accept a false choice between the two. The Nigerian Diaspora deserves neither political charity nor governmental permission to belong. It deserves the full recognition of its citizenship and the democratic rights that citizenship entails
This contradiction is glaring and insulting.
For years, administrations have launched diaspora investment summits, created committees, announced new vehicles, and urged Nigerians abroad to repatriate capital. Under President Muhammadu Buhari, a 14-member committee was inaugurated in 2020 to establish the Nigeria Diaspora Investment Trust Fund — an initiative that received presidential approval. Yet by 2023, the government was still being urged to “conclude” its establishment.
Then came another initiative in 2024, when the Federal Government announced a proposed $10 billion Nigeria Diaspora Fund and invited fund managers to design its legal and operational framework. Now, in 2026, another high-profile conference is upon us, accompanied by an extraordinary delegation of ministers, governors, agency heads, and senior officials.
Nigeria does not lack announcements of diaspora investment. It lacks institutional memory, implementation, accountability, and measurable results.
Before another round of speeches, photo ops, gala dinners, and declarations about the diaspora’s enormous potential, the Federal Government should explain what happened to the initiatives already announced. Where is the Nigeria Diaspora Investment Trust Fund approved under the Buhari administration? Was it ever legally constituted? What investments did it make? What became of the proposed $10 billion Nigeria Diaspora Fund announced in 2024? How much diaspora capital has actually been mobilized? And what makes NIDEC 2026 anything more than another expensive ritual of promises?
These are not complicated questions, but the minimum citizens should expect from a government that spends public funds while demanding private sacrifice.
And yet the betrayal runs deep.
Government machinery can mobilize across ministries, agencies, diplomatic missions, and state governments to pursue diaspora investment. Yet the machinery required to enfranchise Nigerians abroad moves at the speed of political convenience — slow, hesitant, and perpetually stuck. For diaspora voting, the government offers excuses. Committees. Constitutional hurdles. Delays. Another election cycle. Another promise. Another dead end.
Enough. Nigerians abroad are not ATMs with passports.
We are citizens, professionals, entrepreneurs, academics, workers, students, investors, and families whose ties to Nigeria run deeper than remittance receipts. Our commitment to Nigeria cannot be measured solely in dollars. Nigeria’s commitment to us cannot be measured solely in speeches.
Do not ask us to invest in a future we are not allowed to vote for.
If the government can send a high-powered delegation across the Atlantic to solicit diaspora investment, it can summon the same political will to work with the National Assembly, INEC, civil society, and diaspora organizations to finally deliver diaspora voting.
NDCfC therefore demands three actions:
1. Publish a comprehensive accounting of all previous diaspora investment initiatives, including the status of the Buhari-era Nigeria Diaspora Investment Trust Fund and the $10 billion Nigeria Diaspora Fund announced in 2024.
2. Publish measurable objectives for NIDEC 2026, followed by a post-conference report detailing investment commitments, agreements reached, implementation timelines, and, where public funds are involved, the cost of government participation.
3. Place political inclusion at the center of Nigeria’s diaspora policy, with a clear, time-bound pathway to diaspora voter registration and voting.
Nigeria must abandon the outdated, exploitative view of its diaspora as a reservoir of remittances and foreign exchange. A serious democracy wants more from its citizens than their money. It wants their participation. And citizens deserve more from their government than invitations to investment conferences. They deserve a voice.
Remittances show what the diaspora gives to Nigeria. The vote shows what Nigeria owes the diaspora as citizens.
BEYOND REMITTANCES. BEYOND CONFERENCES. BEYOND PROMISES.
It is time for democratic inclusion.
Issued by:
Nigeria Diaspora Coalition for Change (NDCfC), Office of Strategy and Global Affairs
