US may lift visa ban on Nigerians in less than a month – Foreign Affairs Minister

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US may lift visa ban on Nigerians in less than a month – Foreign Affairs Minister

Following the visa restrictions imposed on Nigerians by the Trump administration, the Federal government has been working from behind the scenes to resolve the issue. Those efforts appear to have yielded fruits as the Minister of Foreign affairs hinted at a reversal of the ban.

Godffrey Onyeama disclosed this  on the sidelines of the 5th Nigeria-United States Bi-National Commission (BNC) in Washington DC, United States.

Six countries including Nigeria, Eritrea, Myanmar and Kyrgyzstan, Sudan and Tanzania were all affected by the ban which the US says targets countries with the highest number of visitors who over stay their visa.

The US also sought to cut down on so called “birth tourism” a term used to refer to people coming to the US to give birth solely for the aim of obtaining US citizenship.

In the aftermath of the ban and the criticism that followed Nigeria’s lack of proactive response, President Muhammadu Buhari immediately set up a committee to look into the issues that led to the issuance of the ban on immigrant visas to Nigerians.

In line with the presidential directive, Onyeama said that the Nigerian Government has taken serious steps to address issues raised by the United States in issuing the visa restrictions.

“One of their concerns is that the data we provide should not go through a third party and we have been using a third party in the management of our passport issues. So, they are a bit worried that security information should not go through private third parties before they become available to them.

“So, we have been doing a lot already to address this. We are putting in place some databases and ICT architecture that will capture these data and make them accessible in real-time to Interpol and all the member-countries of Interpol and it should be up and running within about a month,” Onyeama said.