The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Yusuf Tuggar, has said Nigeria and other African countries have been increasingly pressured by the US to accept Venezuelan deportees.

According to the minister, the recent 10 per cent tariff imposed on Nigeria by the Donald Trump administration was likely a result of its refusal to accept the deportees rather than a result of Nigeria attending a meeting with BRICS nations.

The minister, who spoke in an interview on Channels Television’s Politics Today, on Thursday, said it would be difficult for Nigeria to accept the deportees.

“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,” he said.

US President Donald Trump, on Wednesday, met with five West African Presidents— those of Gabon, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mauritania, and Senegal—at the White House, excluding the Nigerian President, Bola Tinubu.

At the same event, Mr Trump announced a 10 per cent tariff on Nigerian goods exported to the US, a move many interpreted as a retaliation following President Tinubu’s participation in the BRICS summit in Brazil. Mr Trump had vowed to impose tariffs on countries associating with BRICS.

Similarly, on Tuesday, the US Embassy in Nigeria introduced a new visa policy restricting Nigerians to a single-entry visa valid for three months, down from the previous five-year multiple-entry option.

Many Nigerians had interpreted the new visa policy to be a retaliation against an earlier policy by the Nigerian government, as the US embassy claimed reciprocity as the reason for the policy shift.

On Thursday, President Bola Tinubu’s office suggested that the new US policy could be in response to Nigeria’s new e-visa policy that granted three months visas to applicants for e-visas. The presidency, however, said the new e-visa policy does not replace the five-year visa for American applicants that Nigeria implements.

However, in his interview, Mr Tuggar suggested that the recent economic and diplomatic measures by the US may be about Nigeria’s refusal to accept Venezuelan deportees rather than any of the other speculated reasons.

The minister described US persistence and pressure on Nigeria to accept Venezuelan deportees as unfair.

“I don’t think it is something that Nigeria is in a position to work with,” he stated.

He also noted that accepting Venezuelan deportees may only be the beginning of a lasting pattern.

On the recent 90-day visa policy, the minister called the US claim of reciprocity false because Nigeria still offered its five years multiple-entry visas to US citizens.

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The only change, he noted, was the introduction of electronic visas (e-visas) to save time.

He identified the short-term visa as a new category for tourists and business people who may not wish to undergo the standard visa application process and wait.

“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. What Nigeria has done that differs is simple. 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.

“We have different categories of 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,” he stated.