The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ambassador Yusuf Tuggar, has said the United States is placing significant pressure on African nations, including Nigeria, to accept deported Venezuelans—some of them recently released from U.S. prisons—a move he firmly rejected.
Speaking during a one-on-one interview on Channels Television’s Politics Today on Friday evening, Tuggar said: “You have to also bear in mind that the US is mounting considerable pressure on African countries to accept Venezuelans to be deported from the US, some straight out of prison.
“It will be difficult for a country like Nigeria to accept Venezuelan prisoners into Nigeria. We have enough problems of our own.
“We cannot accept Venezuelan deportees to Nigeria, for crying out loud. We already have 230 million people. You will be the same people that would castigate us if we acquiesce to accepting Venezuelans from US prisons to be brought in.”
The minister warned that this move by the U.S. could be only the beginning. “The issue of accepting Venezuelan deportees, honestly, I don’t think is something that Nigeria is in a position to work with.
“And I think it would be unfair to insist that Nigeria accepts 300 Venezuelan deportees. Maybe that might just even be the beginning,” Tuggar added.
Tuggar’s comments come amid rising diplomatic tensions following U.S. President Donald Trump’s announcement on Wednesday of a fresh 10 per cent tariff on Nigerian goods exported to the U.S. The move came shortly after President Bola Tinubu participated in the BRICS summit in Brazil, raising speculation that Nigeria’s alignment with the emerging economies bloc may have provoked the White House.
However, Tuggar dismissed the idea, saying: “The issue of tariffs may not necessarily have to do with us participating in BRICS.”
President Trump had hosted five West African leaders—those of Gabon, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mauritania and Senegal—at the White House, notably excluding Nigeria’s President Tinubu.
The U.S. Embassy in Nigeria announced a change to its visa policy on Tuesday, slashing visa validity for Nigerians to single-entry, three-month terms. While some American officials claimed the move was based on reciprocity, Tuggar dismissed the assertion.
“We are talking to the Americans. We are engaging them. We are also explaining and reminding them that we issue them five-year multiple entry visas, the same way that they issue regular travellers five-year multiple entry visas,” he said.
Tuggar explained that Nigeria’s policy is actually flexible, and not as restrictive as the U.S. claims. “We used to have a 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 added that Nigeria’s visa offerings include short-term options for tourists as well as long-term visas: “There are people who are first-time travellers who are coming as tourists that are probably not likely to come back to Nigeria again, maybe because they’re coming for a short while, and they get those 90-day visas.
“So our visa is not saying that every American is only being given 90-day visas or three months or whatever. We give Americans, there are loads of Americans that have these long-term visas. It is not based on reciprocity,” the minister stated.
