US embassy assures Nigerians they are welcome to travel

The US embassy in Nigeria said on Wednesday that Nigerians were welcome to travel to the United States following confusion over President Donald Trump's new immigration rules.

A foreign affairs adviser to President Muhammadu Buhari, Abike Dabiri on Monday warned citizens against non-essential travel to the United States, as some Nigerians had been denied entry at the border.

"The US embassy in Abuja wishes to clarify that there is no reason for Nigerians with valid visas to postpone or cancel their travel to the United States," said the embassy in a statement.

"There is no prohibition against Nigerian lawful permanent residents or persons with a valid visa or other US government authorisation from entering the United States."

Trump signed a revised ban on refugees and on travellers from six Muslim-majority nations on Monday. Nigeria, which has a majority Muslim north and predominantly Christian south, is not on the list.

Nigeria's foreign minister Geoffrey Onyeama told a news conference it was "business as usual" with the United States, despite the earlier advisory from a presidential adviser.

Of the 2.1 million African immigrants living in the United States in 2015, 327,000 were born in Nigeria, according to data from the Pew Research Center, published in February.

AFP

Nigerians must respect laws of host countries

ABUJA Nigeria's Foreign Affairs Minister Aminu Wali has urged Nigerians travelling or residing abroad to respect the laws of their host countries following the execution of 2 Nigerians in Indonesians on drug related offenses.

The minister made the appeal recently while interacting with journalists regretted that 12 other Nigerians were still on death row in Indonesia for drug offenses.

The minister said the federal government appealed to the Indonesian government to commute the death sentence to other forms of imprisonments but the Indonesians still carried on with the death penalty. He said the Nigerian government has been engaging the Indonesian authorities on sparing the lives of the 12 Nigerians remaining in jail.

Meanwhile, Abike Dabiri-Erewa, chairman, House Committee on Diaspora has stressed the need for government to take deliberate measure towards ensuring that the 12 Nigerians on death row are not executed.

Sounding a note of warning, Indonesia's Attorney General Muhammed Prasetyo has said there is no excuse for drug dealers and, "hopefully, this will have a deterrent effect."

A word is enough for the wise......

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Jailed Nigerians in Nepal seeks govt intervention

Nigerian prisoners in Nepal, a country sandwiched between China and India, have called on the Federal Government to rescue them from what they described as dehumanizing treatment.
  Their counsel, Mr. Okechukwu Okpara, told journalists in Abuja on Saturday, that one of the inmates died recently while another was suffering from mental problem.
"Some of these young men are in the prime of their youth and have been sentenced to 20 years imprisonment and more. The conditions in Nepal prisons are horrible and dehumanizing. One of the Nigerian inmates has died and another is now mentally ill. They are not allowed any visitations and not entitled to any parole no matter how well they behave there," Okpara added.
He claimed that efforts to open an official communication channel with the Nepalese authorities on the welfare of the 23 concerned Nigerians had failed, leaving them (inmates) isolated and open to more abuses.
The counsel therefore called "on the Nigerian government to immediately open a line of communication with the Nepalese government in order to give these 23 Nigerians access to fair trial."
He said, "There is also an urgent need to enter into a Memorandum of Understanding with Nepal to transfer the 23 inmates to Nigeria to serve out their sentences if the need arises.
"The truth is that nobody knows what their offences are because nobody has actually gotten through to Nepalese prison authorities. I have only managed to hear from them through an email that they sent to me.
"That was in August this year. Since then, I have made written applications to the offices of President Goodluck Jonathan, the President of the Senate , the Deputy President of the Senate, Committee on Foreign Affairs in the Senate and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs."
Okpara added, "But we have received no responses so far except from the Chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Diaspora, Hon Abike Dabiri-Erewa, who has shown interest in the Nepal 23.
"These are Nigerians incarcerated in a foreign country. Whatever their offenses are, their continued incarceration is in breach of consular relations because international conventions provide that they be given adequate legal representation and the Nigerian government and their families must be notified of their cases.
"But these were not done as the trials were conducted in a language that the prisoners did not understand and no translation was provided whatsoever and they were made to sign some documents under duress."