The Federal Government has said that Nigeria will henceforth adopt the principle of reciprocity in the issuance of visas to foreigners that come into the country.
The Minister of Interior, Honourable Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, said this on Thursday at the Business Day Conference, titled Nigeria Forward: Catalysing Funding for High-Impact Social Projects, with the theme “Funding for Change: Building Bridges for a Resilient Nigeria.”
According to him, Nigeria would begin to treat foreigners seeking Nigerian visas the way Nigerians are treated by their respective countries.
Tunji-Ojo also revealed at the event that the federal government would introduce more stringent surveillance measures at the country’s borders in order to check the inflow and outflow of people so as to ensure that the country is safe.
The Minister said that the era where countries treated Nigerians with disdain in terms of visa issuance was over, adding that the Nigerian government would adopt the principle of give and take.
Tunji-Ojo, who is the keynote speaker on the topic “Ministry of Interior potential high-impact social projects”, said the topic was very important to him because it talks about vulnerability and the weakest people in the country.
He said, “The credibility of the performance of every government has to be based only on the evaluation of how the government handles the weakest in society.
“The essence of government is not just to protect the strong but to make up for and amplify the needs of the weak,” he said.
On principle of reciprocity, he said, “Yesterday (Wednesday), the director of the Centre for Illegal Migration in Turkey, came to my office and I told him in the next couple of weeks to expect reciprocity in terms of travel policy.
“Any country that does not give me the visa on arrival cannot have a visa on arrival in Nigeria. I’m sorry, but it is the truth. We’re not dumping grounds. If you say you are useful, people will see you as being useful.
“But if you tell people you are useless, people will tell you why you are this useless. We want to partner with you, and so on the table, we must be partners; we must be equal partners, and our relationship of investment must be on the basis of the principle of reciprocity.
“So we are doing that to all the countries in the world. The committee is working. I will receive the report tomorrow; you charge me $100 for a visa; I will charge you $100 for a Nigerian visa,” he stated.
On border control, the Minister said, “On the issue of border control, I want to plead and I want to say this: there’s a need for advocacy.
“I want to talk from the heart and not from the head. Let me say this. By my own analysis, this is one of the major problems we have, and I will beg our journalists in the house to be a bit investigative in this regard.
“In terms of security, most of our border communities are more contiguous in nature than you can ever imagine. What does that mean? It means that we have border communities that, yes, are in Nigeria but don’t see themselves as Nigerians. That is a major threat to national security,” Tunji-Ojo said.
The Minister, who also spoke on the issue of identity management, wondered why the country should not have the details of every citizen in one data set.
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