Just as the United States government threatened in a statement on February, it appears that it is making good its promise to ban politicians who are fond of disturbing the peace during election rounds in Nigeria.
Of all visas in the world, the US Visa is arguably the most coveted and one which a lot of Nigerians, both poor and rich, scramble for. As the United States of America’s government has now found an avenue to arm-twist unruly politicians to behave, perhaps those ones who keep fomenting trouble but escape with their family and wealth to the US afterwards, might reduce now.
In the past few weeks, pictures littered social media of top government officials or politicians who went to celebrate their children’s graduation ceremonies in schools in the US and in the United Kingdom. And the question rings: why don’t these elites educate or house their children in the same country which they direct?
One of the plausible explanations is that officials who have kept the Nigerian system unsafe have found a better haven to keep their own families safe abroad and away from the violence and suffering they may have contributed to back home.
One instance of this trend was the incident of a top National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW) figure in Lagos by the name of MC Oluomo, who was seen around the time of the 2019 general elections at his son’s graduation with his wife and the Governor of Georgia, while he left an evidence of violent crimes he had committed for the All Progressives Congress (APC) back in Lagos.
Also, a while before the US announced the ban, the governor of Kaduna State, Mallam Nasir El-Rufai, made a damning comment warning foreign election observers to keep to their business of monitoring elections or else they will return home in body bags. The gravity of such a statement by a sitting governor should naturally attract such a US Visa ban on him. If a sitting governor could openly make such statements, how much more crime would they be willing to commit behind the scenes? Perhaps, it was for that unfortunate statement that when the Northern Governor’s Forum recently announced they would be going for a summit abroad, the body chose Canada and avoided the USA. In fact, there were insinuations that US visas were refused some of the governors on the summit tour.
This visa ban policy by the United States of America, however, does have its shortcomings too. It may not be so effective, after all, considering the fact that the same US government has now issued a caveat that the ban will not involve current elected officials of the Nigerian government. This condition renders futile the effectiveness and usefulness of such a lofty move.
If a politician, for instance, engages in violent practices to bully their way into elective positions, and once they get into government they become immune to such disciplinary measures included in the US Visa ban, what then is the essence of it all? No one even knows the modalities for measuring how the ban takes place – the statement by the US government is too vague to make substance of or give it any lasting foundation.
It is understandable if the government of the United States, for diplomatic and other reasons, says it cannot prevent a sitting president from entering her country. But if such policies is to be announced by the most powerful country in the world, it better be a holistic measure applied across board and to all parties irrespective of their position. Anything else defeats the purpose and is dead on arrival.
References
PM News Nigeria
Featured image source: Ashaiman Online