By Olu Fasan

FIRST, it was the United States. On January 31 this year, President Donald Trump imposed an immigrant visa ban on Nigeria, describing the country as “posing the highest degree of risk” to American national security. Then, it was the European Union: it recently announced that it planned to impose visa restrictions on Nigeria. What is it about Nigeria that the West is treating it more or less like a pariah state?

In his Executive Order, President Trump states that granting immigrant entry into the US for people from Nigeria and five other countries – Burma, Eritrea, Kyrgyzstan, Sudan and Tanzania – would be “detrimental to the interests of the US”. It’s a national humiliation that Nigeria is branded alongside fragile states like Eritrea and Sudan as a danger to the US. Sadly, the country has suffered that ignominy. But why?

Well, let’s start with the stated reasons. The EU plans to impose visa restrictions on Nigerians because Nigeria is “failing to play its part in the return and readmission of its nationals staying illegally in Europe”. It says Nigerians are “among the top ten” nationalities “staying irregularly” in the EU and blames Nigeria’s “non-cooperating government” for failing to tackle the problem. As a result, it “may introduce several measures to make it more difficult for Nigerians to get a Schengen visa”.

Already, it’s difficult to get a Schengen visa in Nigeria. For instance, of the 88,587 applications in 2018, 44,076 were rejected, which, at 49.8 per cent, was “the highest rejection rate” of all other countries in need of visas. Consider another statistics: in 2018, Nigerians spent €5,315,220 in visa applications to Europe; €2,644,560 of this was spent by failed applicants!

Of course, the EU welcomes the money it receives from Nigerians every year, even if it rejects half of their applications. What it doesn’t welcome, however, is the “over-stayers” and Nigeria’s refusal to facilitate their return. International law obliges each country to accept the return of its nationals deported from a foreign country. Any country that refuses to do that is deemed “non-cooperating” and risks facing visa sanctions. It’s a shame that Nigeria can’t create the conditions to stop its citizens going to Europe and staying there illegally, and yet refuses to take them back when they’re asked to leave!

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But if you think the reason for the EU’s threatened action is embarrassing enough for Nigeria, then consider that for the US’s immigrant visa ban. Essentially, the American government requires all foreign countries whose nationals want to enter the US to share identity-management information; share national security and public-safety information; and pass a security and public-safety risk assessment. Well, President Trump says that Nigeria is among “the worst performing in the world” in respect of these conditions. Nigeria, he says, does not comply with the established identity-management and information-sharing criteria, and does not share public-safety and terrorism-related information. As a result, he concludes that “Nigeria presents a high risk, relative to other countries in the world, of terrorist travel to the US”.

Now, you could take both the EU and the US stated reasons and say that they portray Nigeria as a country that doesn’t respect international law and diplomatic rules or that they expose Nigeria’s acute institutional weaknesses or, indeed, both! Some might question why Nigeria should share security information with the US, but the truth is that such information is shared by countries all the time, even among developed countries. So, it’s either Nigeria doesn’t want to share them or lacks the capacity to do so!

But this is where the unstated reasons come in. When countries have influence relationship they don’t name and shame each other, for instance, as the US did to Nigeria by naming it in an Executive Order as “posing the highest degree of risk” to America. Interestingly, in the same Executive Order, President Trump refers to five countries that did not satisfy the information-sharing criteria but which, for US foreign policy interests, warranted diplomatic engagement rather than a visa ban.

You may wonder: What are the US foreign policy interests that qualified the five countries for exemption? Well, according to President Trump, each of the countries “provides critical counter-terrorism cooperation with the US and therefore holds strategic importance in countering malign external actors”. But isn’t Nigeria, as the Executive Order says,”an important strategic partner in the global fight against terrorism”? So, why was Nigeria treated differently from the five countries that were excluded from the visa ban?

Well, Nigeria suffers from such acute negative perceptions that it is not seen as deserving of any favours beyond routine diplomatic practices. And the strongest negative perception is of endemic corruption. Famously in 2016, the then British Prime Minister David Cameron described Nigeria as “a fantastically corrupt country”. Another negative perception is around deepening insecurity. In 2018, when President Buhari went to the White House, President Trump strongly condemned the burning of churches and killing of Christians by Boko Haram and the marauding herdsmen, saying: “We gonna be working on that problem, and working on that problem very, very hard, because we can’t allow that to happen”.

Then, there is the disregard for the rule of law. For instance, it took US superpower arm-twisting for Buhari to release Sambo Dasuki and Omoyele Sowore from detention, despite repeated court orders. In his book The Audacity of Hope, President Barack Obama said that, in Nigeria, there are two sets of rules “one for elites and one for ordinary people”!

With such negative perceptions, including the widespread view that it squandered its oil wealth, Nigeria has few true friends in government and diplomatic circles. It’s hard to think of Western presidents, diplomats and policy makers who think that Nigeria deserves special favours or deferential treatment.

Truth is, Nigeria’s self-inflicted domestic problems continue to undermine its international standing. If it wants to be a serious global player, it must first put its house in order and form strategic relationships with the West!

VANGUARD