The audit observations concerning NiDCOM should not become another contest between personalities. They should compel Nigeria to confront a deeper institutional question: why has a public commission established by law been allowed to operate for years without the Governing Board designed to oversee its administration, accounts and strategic direction?…
The audit observations concerning NiDCOM should not become another contest between personalities. They should compel Nigeria to confront a deeper institutional question: why has a public commission established by law been allowed to operate for years without the Governing Board designed to oversee its administration, accounts and strategic direction?
The recent observations of the Auditor-General for the Federation concerning the Nigerians in Diaspora Commission demand a careful and responsible response. They should neither be trivialised nor sensationalised. An audit observation is not a criminal conviction. It does not, by itself, establish personal dishonesty or guilt. The Commission and every official mentioned or affected must be afforded the opportunity to produce records, explain transactions and respond through the institutions constitutionally empowered to examine public expenditure.
At the same time, these are not anonymous allegations circulating on social media. They form part of an official report of the Auditor-General for the Federation, transmitted to the National Assembly pursuant to the Constitution. The appropriate response is therefore neither condemnation without due process nor defensiveness without documentation. It is institutional accountability. According to the report, the thirteen observations concerning NiDCOM cover matters including the non-submission of audited financial statements, emergency procurement without the required certification, contract splitting, questions about contractors’ statutory documentation and financial capacity, lack of evidence supporting the execution of certain contracts, overpayments, tax and electronic-payment breaches, misapplication of funds, excessive cash advances and vehicles that were not presented for physical verification. Some of these observations may ultimately be explained. Others may require corrective action, recovery of funds or sanctions by the appropriate authorities. That determination belongs to the Auditor-General, the Public Accounts Committees of the National Assembly and other competent institutions, not to social media.
But one feature of the report should trouble every believer in accountable government: against each of the thirteen observations, the management response was recorded as “No response.” This is where the matter moves beyond individual transactions and exposes a governance gap.
A Governing Board Is Not Decorative
The Nigerians in Diaspora Commission (Establishment) Act 2017 provides for a Governing Board responsible for the general administration of the Commission. Its statutory responsibilities include important oversight relating to policy, management accounts and audited accounts. Yet the Governing Board contemplated by the law has not been constituted and operationalised.
We should be careful not to claim that the mere existence of a board would automatically have prevented every issue identified by the Auditor-General. Boards can be ineffective. They can be politicised, passive or captured by management. A governing board is therefore not an automatic insurance policy against administrative failure. But an effective board creates structured points of scrutiny that do not otherwise exist. It requires management accounts to be presented and interrogated. It can establish finance, audit and procurement committees. It can demand explanations for departures from approved procedures. It can require internal audit recommendations to be implemented. It can track whether audited financial statements have been prepared and submitted on time. It can insist that queries from external auditors receive complete and prompt responses.
In other words, the board does not execute contracts or process payments. That remains the responsibility of management. Its purpose is to ensure that those exercising executive authority do not operate without structured, independent and recurring oversight.
The audit findings can consequently be understood through three stages: prevention, mitigation and response.
At the prevention stage , a functional Governing Board could have approved clear procurement and financial-control policies, monitored compliance and required periodic reporting on exceptions. Contract splitting, emergency procurement, cash advances, contractor qualification and movement between expenditure heads should all have been visible within a properly functioning control environment.
At the mitigation stage , regular management accounts, internal audit reports, asset registers and procurement reviews could have detected irregularities before they accumulated into thirteen external audit observations. Questions about overpayments, deductions, supporting documents and missing vehicles should not have had to await the Auditor-General’s intervention.
At the response stage, a board could have demanded that every audit query be assigned, documented and answered within a fixed period. The repeated entry of “No response” might then have been avoided or, at the very least, responsibility for the institutional failure to respond would have been clearly established.
That is the practical value of governance. It creates several opportunities to stop a mistake from becoming a pattern and a pattern from becoming a crisis.
What Leadership Should Do When the Board Is Absent
It is true that the power to appoint NiDCOM’s Governing Board rests with the President. The Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Commission cannot constitute the statutory board by personal decision. But that fact should not become a cover behind which executive leadership escapes scrutiny.
If I were the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of NiDCOM, and if I genuinely regarded the Governing Board as a necessity rather than an inconvenience, I would make its constitution a documented institutional priority.
I would formally and repeatedly advise the Presidency and the appropriate supervising authorities that the Commission was operating with an incomplete governance architecture. I would place those representations on record and include the continued absence of the Board as a governance risk in the Commission’s annual reports.
I would seek meetings with the relevant offices, submit proposed timelines and follow up until the matter received a formal response. Where permissible, I would request that the issue be reflected in budget-defence and legislative-oversight proceedings so that the absence of the Board remained visible to those responsible for public accountability.
I would also ensure that the Commission’s management did not behave as though the absence of a board had removed the obligation of scrutiny. Internal audit, procurement planning, asset verification, financial reporting and responses to audit queries would receive greater, not lesser attention.
Pending the President’s action, I would strengthen every lawful internal control available to management. I might also seek structured external professional advice on audit and governance, while making it absolutely clear that no informal or advisory arrangement could replace the Governing Board created by an Act of the National Assembly. Most importantly, I would not celebrate the absence of a board as freedom from interference. I would treat it as an institutional vulnerability. A chief executive who truly believes in a board should be able to demonstrate the steps taken to secure one.
What Consensus-Based Oversight Taught Me
My conviction about the importance of collective oversight is informed not only by theory but also by experience. During my time in local government leadership in Belgium, I had the privilege of serving in the highest decision-making organ for social welfare matters under two chairpersons of different political persuasions. The membership of that organ was constituted along political-party lines, with representatives seconded by their respective caucuses.
One chairperson rarely saw beyond party lines. The other was remarkably party-blind. Under the party-blind leader, there was visible camaraderie across political divisions. Consensus was not always immediate, but it was permanently sought. Members asked difficult questions without every disagreement being treated as hostility. Decisions were better tested, more broadly owned and less vulnerable to legal contestation. That experience taught me that plural oversight need not weaken executive authority. Properly led, it improves the quality, legitimacy and durability of decisions.
A Governing Board for NiDCOM should operate in that spirit. It should not become an arena for partisan obstruction or personal rivalry. Nor should it be populated merely to reward political loyalty. It should bring together people capable of exercising independent judgement, including credible diaspora representation and expertise in public finance, law, institutional governance, diplomacy and diaspora affairs. The objective should be constructive challenge: asking the questions that management may overlook, ensuring that decisions comply with the law and building collective ownership of the Commission’s strategic direction.
Strengthening, Not Undermining, NiDCOM
Nigerians in the Diaspora advocated for many years for a dedicated national institution capable of coordinating diaspora engagement. NiDCOM is an important product of that struggle. Its establishment represented a recognition that Nigerians abroad are not simply sources of remittances but strategic partners in national development. It is precisely because the Commission matters that its governance must be completed.
Defending NiDCOM cannot mean shielding it from scrutiny. The strongest defence of the Commission is to ensure that its records are complete, its procurement is compliant, its accounts are submitted on time and its responses to constitutional audit institutions are prompt and verifiable. Similarly, criticism of an audit finding should not be interpreted as hostility towards the Commission or its leadership. Institutions are strengthened when weaknesses are identified and corrected. They are weakened when legitimate questions are personalised, politicised or dismissed.
The immediate course of action should therefore be straightforward. NiDCOM should produce the contracts, vouchers, approvals, delivery records, asset registers and other documents required to answer each observation. Outstanding financial statements should be submitted. Where funds are found to be recoverable, they should be recovered and remitted. Where documentation establishes that expenditure was properly authorised and executed, that should equally be recognised. The Commission should also establish a time-bound audit-remediation plan, stating the action required on each observation, the responsible officer and the completion date. Progress should be reported to the appropriate oversight institutions.
Above all, the President should urgently constitute NiDCOM’s Governing Board, with members possessing the independence, competence, and diaspora credibility required to perform the role contemplated by law. This controversy must not end with explanations about thirteen audit observations. Nigeria should use it to correct the governance condition that allowed questions of this magnitude to arise, remain unanswered and reach the Auditor-General without the benefit of a fully functioning statutory oversight structure.
The principle is simple: no public institution should be expected to deliver its mandate while an essential part of its lawful governance architecture remains missing. Produce the records. Answer the observations. Implement the recommendations. Constitute the Board. That is not an attack on NiDCOM. It is how we protect its mission, restore confidence and build the accountable diaspora institution Nigerians at home and abroad deserve.
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