Yusuf Tuggar, minister of foreign affairs, says Nigeria will not accept Venezuelan deportees from the United States.
The minister was reacting to the reported pressure from the
United States to send Venezuelan deportees, some from prison, to some African countries.
Speaking on Channels TV’s Politics Today programme on
Thursday, Tuggar said Nigeria already has a booming population and a myriad of
other challenges it’s battling with.
“It would be difficult for countries like Nigeria to accept
Venezuelan prisoners into Nigeria,” Tuggar said.
“We have enough problems of our own; we cannot accept
Venezuelan deportees to Nigeria. We already have 230 million people.”
Nigeria’s refusal to accept
asylum seekers from the US was partly responsible for the recent visa
restrictions imposed on the country by President Donald Trump.
An alleged imbalance in visa reciprocity from Nigeria was
cited as the reason for the hard-hitting penalty, although the exact details
were not made public by the US.
There were claims — now confirmed to be false — that Nigeria
caused the policy change by stopping to issue five-year visas to American
citizens.
Tuggar said there are ongoing engagements with the US to
clarify the issue.
“What Nigeria has done that differs is simple. We used to
have visa on arrival that wasn’t running efficiently. We introduced these
online electronic visas that you can apply for so that it saves you time
instead of just arriving and then going through the process of getting the visa
when you have already arrived,” he said.
“The same way I am talking to you on my laptop I can just
simply apply for a Nigerian visa and you get it and then you fly and so it
makes it easier. This is what we’ve done.
“We have different categories of visas; there are people
that are first time travellers that are coming as tourists that are probably
not likely to come back to Nigeria again, maybe because they are coming for a
short while and they get those 90-day visas.
“Our visa is not saying that every American is only being
given a 90-day visa or three months or whatever. We give Americans and loads of
Americans these long-term visas.”
Tuggar, however, stressed that Nigeria will not be a dumping
ground for Venezuelan prisoners deported from the US amid Trump’s crackdown on
undocumented migrants.
Nigeria had urged the US to reconsider its decision in the
spirit of partnership, cooperation, and shared global responsibilities.
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