He is a Germany-based self-acclaimed head of the Nigerian In Diaspora Organization, Europe (NIDOE) who has been its Germany’s chairman since forever until he crystallized as the Europe numero uno of the NIDOE since 2016. With his educational trajectory, one would have thought a man with Masters Degree in Peace and Security from the prestigious University of Hamburg should know his onions. But sardonically and lugubriously, he is one person who has again proved that education is no freedom from ignorance. One can actually be literate without being educated. The same way one can be educated without being sagacious or sapient.

This rejoinder becomes expedient as a corollary of his misrepresentation of facts in his jabberwocky against the personage of the CEO / Chairman, Nigerians In Diaspora Commission (NIDCOM), Hon. Mrs. Àbíké Dábírí-Erewà. It is pertinent to state that this scallywag and his foot-soldiers have deployed many shenanigans, deployed plethora jiggery-pokery since 2016 to have Nigerians In Diaspora Organization (NIDO) become NIDCOM where he alongside his nest of hawks could feast and feather their net of avaricious legerdemain to the detriment of Nigerians in Diaspora. His efforts were consistently feckless! So, his endless tirade against the office and the person of Hon. Mrs Àbíké Dabiri-Erewa is understood!

THE CRUX OF THE MATTER

Disgruntled Kenneth Gbandi has not left anyone in doubt about his selfish and inordinate ambition to become a board member of the Nigerians In Diaspora Commission (NIDCOM), having lost out in his scheme to transmute his self-styled NIDO to become the FG-backed NIDCOM. That is why he has come under the incognito of elephantine and sham Diaspora Housing Project to bamboozle only the gullible. What is however amazing is the curiosity to ask whether Mr. Gbandi needs a tutelage from a Junior Secondary School (JSS) 2 pupil to take him through the popular ‘Brighter Grammar’ English textbook to understand what is clearly stated in the NIDCOM Act.

Why would Mr. Gbandi resort to mudslinging and needless name-calling when his ambition to become a NIDCOM board member does NOT lie with Hon. Mrs. Àbíké Dabiri-Erewa? Isn’t the NIDCOM provisos clear enough or is it that our Mr. Know-It-All trying to be mischievous? Should we take Mr. Gbandi to ‘comprehension class’ to tell him that the appointment of the Commission’s Chairman as well as its board members is the exclusive prerogative of Mr. President and not that of Àbíké Dabiri? Or should we help him with reading aid which can be translated in his mother’s dialect?

WHAT GBANDI DOES NOT KNOW

Mr. Kenneth Gbandi DOES NOT seem to know (or except he is just being mischievously flimflam) that e’en the so-called Nigerians In Diaspora Organization (NIDO) is just one of the groups – social or pressure outside the shores of the country which the Commission was established to coordinate and/or act as the umbrella body for. How he chose to reek in ignorance of the provisions of the Act that established the Commission beats imagination.

For the avoidance of doubt, it is fundamentally germane that Nigerians know and acquaint themselves with the authentic information, not the bogus or ersatz news being bandied around on the blogosphere by these ‘irredentists’ and agents of discord. We owe posterity this because the average Nigerian that we know hardly fact-check information. They take every news read on the social media, hook, line and sinker and run with it. Hence, this rejoinder is deemed congruously apropos.

WHAT NIDCOM ACT STATES

The Act which established the Nigerians In Diaspora Commission (NIDCOM) states in;

Part II – Of the Act also gives the Commission the following powers;

(i) to coordinate and harmonise all Continental Nigerians in Diaspora Organizations

(ii) reach out to Nigerian communities abroad through their various groups, organizations and professional bodies et al.

From the above, it is clear that NIDCOM is not a subset of NIDO just like the wayfarer Kenneth Gbandi has been propagating it to be, but the other way round. NIDO is just like any other group (s) outside the shores of the nation.

Every group has equal right as much as NIDO. The Nigerians In Diaspora Commission (NIDCOM) under the able ascendancy of Hon. Mrs. Àbíké Dabiri-Erewa is MOTHER BODY of all groups, societies, bodies, and what have you outside the country.

It is therefore ridiculous, or rather grotesque and out-rightly preposterous to read somebody take his desperation beyond the limit. Funnily and risibly, these agent provocateurs from the so-called NIDOE are the ones trying to create issues where none is extant. There are NIDO (China), NIDO (America), NIDO (South Africa) as well as others, but these groups have not had any with the mother body at home.

Those who know Kenneth Gbandi should school him on the fact that NIDCOM is NOT a surrogate of NIDO, especially not that which activities have been very in-effeminate and self-serving. It is an open and shut fact that FEW of the NIDO chapters have been very effective. That’s not in doubt. If however Kenneth Gbandi is so desperate to become a member of the board of the Commission, he should take his desperation to The Presidency which has the sole authority to appoint subject Senate’s approval.

Hon. Mrs. Àbíké Dabiri-Erewa is too busy with a national assignment and she is desirous to deliver on her mandate than engage in needless argy-bargy with some loose cannons and desperadoes!

Ọmọ́gbọ́láhàn Babs
Chief Operating Officer
DLB Charity Foundation, UK.