VISA BAN: US Says Nigerian Politicians Remain Banned but Concealed
The United State of America has insisted that Nigerian politicians who were found to have interfered with electoral processes the country will remain banned from going to the US but their identities will also remain concealed.
The US government on Monday said some Nigerians who tampered with the smooth electoral processes in the November 2019 governorship elections in Bayelsa and Kogi States have been placed on visa ban.
That notwithstanding, their identities will remain undisclosed because issues related to visa issuance are confidential, the US ambassador to Nigeria, Mary Beth Leonard, said on Wednesday at the end of the inaugural consular meeting with Nigerian officials.
She explained that “as US visa processes are in fact confidential and so we do not publish a list, we do not make public who it is that would be subjected to this sanction.
“An individual who intends to travel or apply for visa would be refused and impeded but it is not something that we advertise who these individuals are.”
Nigerian Sketch reports that the visa ban has generated reaction within the Nigerian political circle, with most of the citizens seeing it as capable of causing a change of mindset among government officials.