The United States ambassador, Richard Mills, says relations with Nigeria remains cordial despite the recent visa row.
The top american diplomat paid a courtesy visit to Abuja Headquarters of Daar Communications PLC on Thursday.
Mills said despite the Nigerian government’s displeasure over the review of the U.S visa policy, with the Nigerian Presidency insisting that it was done in bad faith as there were no reciprocity issues, contrary to what the U.S announced, his home government thinks otherwise,
“We have issues of overstay, with Nigerians, particularly with Nigerian students and Exchange students.”.
Mills also cited security issues.
“There were issues of concern whether we had access to the right criminal data base and arrest records, so that we could just make sure that Nigerians who were coming to the United States would not threaten the safety and security of the U.S, just like Nigeria would not want Americans to come with criminal records”.
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Nigeria’s Foreign Affairs minister, Yusuf Tuggar had last week said in a TV interview that the visa review which from last week see Nigerian passport holders getting only single-entry 3 months validity , was due to rejection of the Trump administration’s pressure for African countries to accept deportees from that South American nation which is an OPEC member as Nigeria.
Ambassdor Mills told AIT that this is not the case as the U.S is only trying to “ensure the integrity of our visa process and system”, even though the U.S State Department had in early June, given Nigeria and about 40 other countries 60 days to address the security data concerns.
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BRICS and Nigeria
Ambassdor Mills also disagreed with insinuations that the immediate implementation of the reviewed visa policy was connected to President Bola Tinubu’s participation at the Rio Summit of the BRICS bloc held from July 6-7.
“The change in the visa schedule and the review had nothing to do with any country’s foreign policy positions, or whether they did take or did not take deportees, or whether they joined one group of states or anither”.
AIT recalls that even as the BRICS summit was about to commence, U.S president, Donald Trump announced that any nation seeking to partner with the BRICS wil be slammed with huge tariff hikes.
Nigeria-U.S Trade
Ties Even as the Africa Growth Opportunities Act, AGOA set to either be scrapped or re-nacted by the U.S Congress later in 2025, Amb. Mills said a.lot of efforts was being put into strengthening economic and comercial opportunities.
“The Embassy in Abuja and the Consulate in Lagos, we were very focused, even before this new administration came in. For instance last year in July, under my previous boss, president Biden we signed something called the Commercial and Investment Partnership Agreement. It showss how important Nigeria is to us”.
He explained that agreement entails both governments connecting Nigerian and American businesses, and the removal of trade and comercial barriers.
U.S Embassy-Daar Partnership
Earlier during a brief courtesy call on the , Daar’ Management, its acting CEO, Marcel Anyalechi had told the American diplomat of the media outfit’s commitment to the sustenance of democratic ideals through free speech and requested the embassy facilitates connections to american businesses which operate in Daar’s niche.
Amb. Mills replied that a budding partnership with Daar will be depeened as his embassy team thought best that AIT, one of the DAAR platforms was selected as the channel for his first media interview since assuming duty in Nigeria, which was in July ,2024
