‘I Support And Will Always Support One Nigeria’

Dr Rosalyn Dressmand is a Sociologist, founder of African
Tide Union and President, Nigeria In Diaspora Organisation, NIDO, Germany. She is a well-bred and properly educated Nigerian. She proved that much when The Tide team of Arnold Alalibo, Deputy Features Editor, and Sylvia ThankGod-Amadi, Woman Editor, interviewed her where she spoke on a wide range of issues. Excerpts:

What’s the make-up of the NIDO Germany?

Nigerians in Diaspora Organization is a body of Nigerian citizens living abroad. It was founded in the year 2000 by the then administration of General Olusegun Obasanjo (retd). The whole idea was to replicate the diaspora movement that is made across Asian countries. For example, diaspora built India, China, and many other countries. So, former President Obasanjo felt that Nigerians abroad should come back home and develop Nigeria. NIDO is not very complex. We have Nigerians in diaspora worldwide, which encompasses all the diaspora organisations round the world. We are in over 189 countries which means we are doing better than embassies around the world. We have Nigerians in diaspora in different continents. For example, NIDO Europe, Asia, America, etc. We in Germany fall into NIDO Europe. Then in Europe, we are NIDO Germany, Switzerland, Austria, UK, etc. So, I am representing NIDO Germany.

You have talked about the contributions the diaspora has made such as building India, China, etc. What has NIDO Germany done for Nigeria?

We have done a lot; it is like people seem not to pay attention to the things we do. Now, singularly, we do a lot of remittances that nobody cares to know about. As you know our children have no proper insurance policies, we have no pension plans that cut across the common man. For example, part of my parents was a civil servant. After she died, we did not get any remuneration. So diaspora becomes insurances for their families. Apart from that, we do singular projects; education projects, gender specific projects. We also work very hard to advise Nigeria on policies.

Tell us what the projects are; and in executing them, do you synergize with government, agencies or you undertake them single-handedly?

It depends on the project. There are projects we carry out single-handedly and there are ones we need to synergize with other organizations. There are also projects we need to collaborate with government. But our first assignment as diaspora organization is to drive back investment, that is what they call foreign direct investment to Nigeria. That is our first assignment and we are doing that, but we cannot quite be successful if  government doesn’t collaborate with us. However, in 2013, we did a sensitization project for gender; “women in politics”. That project did not need us to partner with government but with organizations. So we partnered with different organizations in order to get women sensitized and make politics attractive to them, and through our intervention that period, we had many women getting interested in politics. The NIDO Germany has also done projects with hospitals where we gave them equipment. We gathered the equipment in Germany based on the hospitals’ demands. All the hospitals need to do is pay the cost of container shipment and collect their consignment. That is a notable humanitarian support. We have also done a project in Edo State where they forgot bunch of young people for some irrelevant political reasons. A bunch of us collected several humanitarian materials and delivered to them just to give them support. Right now, we are doing educational project. This educational project needs collaboration with government. How? We had in the past 6-3-3-4 education system. I am the first product of the 6-3-3-4 system. I can proudly tell you I can do almost everything we’ve done with hand. I can type, write shorthand. I learned them then. I can paint a house, comfortably put tiles on walls and floors, I can do virtually every skill you can think of. I can cook very well, make dress with sewing machine, but today it is not the case anymore. Today, nobody respects skills, nobody respects vocational learning and that part of it is dying off. So what we agreed in NIDO Germany as part of our policy is homeland development, and how do we go about this? We bring the needed education to Nigeria. We try to sensitize the ministry of education in every state so that they can properly log in so that we can have a proper 6-3-3-4 system back in the country and, of course, that is a humongous assignment. It takes a lot of our time and a lot of our money. First of all, convincing the German government to support us on that, secondly, convincing the state government to work in collaboration with us, is not an easy task. But in 2017, we had managed to log in with the government of Bayelsa State and we have set up a huge training centre there, where we are training in various skills young men and women of between 117 and 120 trainees in Yenagoa precisely. You may probably ask why Yenagoa? Yes, Yenagoa because they accepted us. I read in the book that they were looking for diaspora to come back home and support them in their restoration program. So we logged in there and we have been working with them. This project is a model project, it has not been done in any African country at all. And, of course, other states too that are willing to log in will be welcome to log in with us.

What exactly are these projects?

We are doing Smart Houses A-Z. Smart houses A-Z encompasses plumbing, mechanical, electrical, engineering, roofing, tiling, preparing of P.O.Ps, paints, painting, sewing and everything about skill. A smart house is a self-sufficient house that generates its own energy, water and recycles the  water and energy for re-use. It is environmental-friendly. You will not use a generator instead you will need to log in to use solar energy. That means you will need to produce enough solar energy that will run your house 24-hours and by so doing, you have already secured that house. The cost of security is very very expensive here in this country. We are doing a project called ‘QUATIA’. The project quatia is supposed to qualify young people in solar energy. Our environment is very polluted; one day oil will come to an end and the question is where do we go from there? And we have what I tag structural violence in this country. So the best way to go to create some little structures for the common man is to dig more into the research and development of solar energy and its components and use it here in this country. So we have started that training. Our first trainees are set to kick off with practical course which comprises building their first grid of 100 kilowatts of energy which will not be a joke. Today, Engr Clause Brand is flying with the boeing 737 to Port Harcourt with a lot of hardwares we will be needing to kick off the practical training of building our own solar grid in Yenagoa.

Do you teach people how to construct the smart house or you build it having certain beneficiaries in mind?

No, no, no! We will teach them, empower them, let them know how to do it. The idea here is that they will form cooperative and then through the cooperative, they will be able to build the smart house because a smart house needs more than just a builder. It needs skills in masonry, carpentry, plumbing, electricity, water management and more. So, all these things come together to form a smart house. So they will  form  a cooperative to be able to build smart houses for people. Smart houses sound luxurious, of course, it is luxurious; it sounds expensive, on the contrary. They will be building houses that will be both environmental and commoners-friendly.

You became the President of this body in June this year. How would you rate the past executive, vis-à-vis fulfilling their mandate?

Yes, we have lived up to the mandate. I have been in the executive for sometime. I was the vice president of NIDO Germany two and half years ago. In 2016, I lost my president and I automatically became acting president. I sat in his position until I was elected the president. Yes, we have been fulfilling our mandate because every year we have a team we work with, we set milestones for ourselves of what we would want to achieve each year. We spell out how we intend to achieve development yearly. In the last two years, we have worked so much in building awareness; we have worked very hard in contributory, social assignments and this year, we have moved a step forward. We want to do direct home land development which involves, of course, addressing practical investors. We encourage them to come and invest in our country, and in our various states. We do not settle right now in Abuja or Lagos alone, we encourage members to go to the grassroots, for example, I am in Bayelsa State. This is the first time a project is going to a place somehow remote as Yenagoa, instead of Abuja or Lagos. So, we are fulfilled and are still working very hard to meet our target come the next two years.

We know how persons in diaspora have impacted on their countries politically many of whom have contributed to political developments in their nations. Some have even returned to be part of the political process. How has your own community in Germany contributed to political development here?

Thank you very much. You can see that for everthing I have described here, by and by there are political components in it. No, we do not sit there and wish that every thing be well  so  we can come back home occasionally and enjoy. No, we also actively contribute. When we talk about Nigerians in diaspora, it is a totality of a whole body. We meet on national, continental and international levels to discuss and decisions are reached and people are mandated to come along to write policy papers. Do not forget that we can only write policy papers, and suggest to the federal government. Again, it is one thing to write yet another thing to carry out the suggestion. Until now, we have managed in collaboration with all the diaspora bodies to gain the attention of the federal government. At the moment, we have a commission set up by the central government known as NIDCom headed by Hon. Abike Dabiri. She is doing quite great in that area. You know it is not only about enjoying the remittances sent by loved ones in diaspora, another thing is to protect the interest of these loved ones, so that they can bring the remittances more.  Abike is doing so well in this, so I can say that politically we are making impact.

The former Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, was recently attacked by the IPOP group in Germany. What has been the reaction of NIDO Germany to the incident?

This is a hot topic. First of all, as the president of the Nigerians in diaspora Germany, I will do my best not to bring in ethnicity or any kind of discrimination here. As NIDO Germany, we have condemned what happened. But again, we must know that in every society, it doesn’t matter if it is Nigerian or European society, there are some persons that are out of the way, you don’t have control over them. On another point, without stepping on any person’s toes I condemn this hundred per cent as I said earlier in a press statement. However, I think that the former Deputy Senate President must have also over-reacted because in every country, democracy is real; only in Nigeria I wonder how real is democracy. If your subjects are not satisfied about anything and they want to discuss it with you, I wonder why you should run away. I have seen politicians in Germany that got stoned with tomatoes, bananas and things like that but they did not run away. They rather brought peace and order. These people love you, they voted for you, may be they have a ptoblem that you should look at. Let me move away from the issue of IPOB. For me, I support, and will always support one Nigeria, after all, my father gave his life for Nigeria. If  I don’t support one Nigeria that means I don’t value the life of my father. But there is always bound to be a disagreement in any set-up. The best possible way to approach that is to calm your subjects down and listen to their problem and not to run away from them. I can remember during Obama’s regime, when he was being interviewed somewhere, somebody picked up his shoe and stoned it at him. Did he run away? They sorted it out. So, without stepping on the toes of politicians in Nigeria, it will be nice to sort issues out when they start instead of making a huge national problem out of them.

But there is a difference between protest and assault.

Well, in the videos I have seen online there is nothing like assault.

What happened in Germany calls to mind a similar thing that occurred in Geneva when the Cameroonian President, Paul Biya, visited the country. There was a large protest against him. Don’t you foresee a situation where this trend will smear Africa’s image? Is there no better way to register our grievances against our leaders by the Diaspora?

I think we need to do more work in the area of acculturization. For example, some of the Nigerians in Germany are not even in the cultural system of Germany. They are neither here nor there. So, that kind of acculturization will support them so much. Another way that we could collectively solve this problem is by keeping promises. When politicians make promises during elections, they should at least keep half of them. The masses are suffering, we will not say we don’t see that, we all know that. We have energy, yet we don’t have electricity; we export our raw materials and buy same as finished products. We are a consumer country; we produce nothing. Over 49 percent of Nigerian youths are jobless. These problems are not pertinent to Nigeria alone, it is  pertinent to the whole of Africa. The migration wave towards Germany, I experienced it my self. I am sure nobody would like to live his home, if he is satisfied, to go out and die in the Sahara desert. The other day I saw a video of a young woman in deportation camp who said even if she was deported, she will still go back because she has no prospects here. Have you ever asked why are people carrying guns. Why are people so unsecured nowadays?. I talked about structural violence, I picked that word very carefully before I said it. When I traveled from Bayelsa to Port Harcourt, I counted 25 checkpoints; two redundant, 23 active. And you are practically assaulted every way on your travel. There is no human right in this country as well as some African countries. Look at Ghana, I remember the huge noise about Ghana must go out of Nigeria, I wonder if they will say Nigeria must go out of Ghana nowadays. This is because the development in Ghana is very striking. These are things, very little things, that blow up the minds of people that are not capable of handling things and then they see these politicians, they come around, instead of addressing what we have. If you invite some of them to come and discuss problems with you, they will not come. But invite them to come and celebrate with you, they will come. It is very disheartening.

Nigeria at the moment has global image crises. As members of the Nigerian community in Germany, how do you manage the image of this country over there?

On my own little shoulder, it is a very huge problem. When I became fully imbibed in the culture of Germany, my lord mayor suggested that I become a German. I said I would want to think about it. I gave thought to a lot of things. Of course, it is not a bad idea picking a German green card. On the other hand, if all Nigerians give up their Nigerian passport and become Germans who will be Nigerian? I changed my mind and I said no, I don’t want to be a German. I am a Nigerian, it won’t change anything. So, I told my lord mayor, I am sorry, I will not be a German, I am a Nigerian. But that does not free me from my responsibilities in Germany. It is only because I am patriotic and I want to remain a Nigerian. Not quite long, my son approached me and said mummy why are you a Nigerian and not a German? And I replied that it  is so because I want to be a Nigerian. Before I realized it, my son had completed every legality to become a Nigerian. My second son logged in and my daughter followed suit so we are all Nigerians. It is a difficult thing. Now I keep a Nigerian passport, the good thing is that I can move around. I can wake up in the morning, pick up my passport and go home for any reason at all. Another good thing is that the Nigerian Embassy in Germany works very closely with diaspora. You will not have problem any where that they will not come to your aid. I lost my passport and that is the only means of identification I have. I don’t go around any where in this world without it. I am a very proud Nigerian. Charity, they say, begins at home. If you are not proud of yourself, you cannot attract people’s respect and attention. As a Nigerian, I do my best to live a legal life. Apart from petty traffic offences like over-speeding, I think I am as clean as a baby’s pooh. However, it will interest you to know that most of the people claimed to be Nigerians are not truly Nigerians.  In 2007, there was an article in New York Times; “Every second man with a  brief case is a Nigerian”. Of course, it is not true, but it was a catchy article that actually got the attention it wanted.  The image of Nigeria is bad. In Germany, our ambassador has started a new project; a cultural project, where he is trying to show the people that we have different cultures. I  will call it an image booster for Nigeria. Apart from the traditional work we Nigerians are doing there to portray a good image of Nigeria, you hear only the bad things that happen to Nigerians or Nigerians are doing. It is very difficult to read about the numerous good things Nigerians are doing abroad. In Germany, if you ask two institutions who Rosalyn Dressman is, they will tell you and also tell you where to find me. But in this country, nobody knows me. Nobody cares to know what I do even though everything I do and live for is for homeland development. African Tide, our first mission, is to support Africans in Germany, and we are a very successful organization in Germany. Who knows about the African Tide here in Nigeria? Nobody. So, that is the point. People enjoy carrying bad news, so the best we can do is to keep pushing and replicating the good name of Nigeria. The other day I read about Nigeria making it very high academically in UK. Which local newspaper carried that? But as soon as there is a bad news, it will filter through all the local newspapers. I will suggest that we as Nigerians move a little away from negativity and put on the coat of positivity so that we don’t see ourselves in such bad light.

Don’t you think that it is the responsibility of those living over there to disseminate such positive information emanating from there?

It is a collective responsibility. We are doing that. It is the responsibility of the civil society as well as the government. So when will the government start calling us to discuss our problems as diasporas? Government is mostly interested in the remittances we do, but they are not interested in helping us continue to do that remittances. That is where I will call on the government to open their doors a bit wider to accommodate us diaspora.

In the course of responding to the last question, you talked about culture, as well as how your children became Nigerians one after the other. Have you been able to Nigerianize them properly?

Yes, in our upbringing most of our parents failed to teach us our language. You go to any home that claims they are super home, they don’t speak language they only speak English which was a wrong step towards a right direction. First of all, I made that same mistake. My two sons speak a bit of Ogba language. Nigeria is a very diverse country; there is no Nigerian culture, it is difficult. Even though we are strong in our diversity, there is no Nigerian culture. There is only culture of where you come from, for instance, Ikwerre, Ogoni, Ijaw cultures, etc. As you drive through every 50 to 100 kilometers, you have new settlements, new understanding,  new language and culture, how do you imbibe all these? It becomes difficult. There government has to think of some policies that will culturally bring us all together. For example, the former Deputy Senate President was invited to a new yam festival. This is cultural move, a good move though in the right direction that ended not so tasteful. Through that kind of gathering, our children learn about our various cultures. It is a good move in the right direction. I will encourage this kind of move because this is exactly what I do with my family. Right now, my children can cook all manner of Nigerian food. It is lots of work; it takes us lots of discipline to do that.