Abuja may reciprocate the new British visa policy which requires Nigerians living in the United Kingdom to return to Nigeria to renew their travel documents.
Foreign Affairs Minister, Joy Ogwu, said at her valedictory news conference on Wednesday that Nigeria�s bilateral agreements require it to reciprocate any gesture.
She regretted the new British policy and stressed that the contents of Nigeria�s bilateral relations with other countries must be maintained to protect the interest of Nigerians.
“Most of these things that you see manifest are based on the national calculation of nation states. The national interest of every nation state must be served. If we don�t serve our own national interest of Nigeria, then it is our fault. If the British define their national interest as keeping as many Nigerians out of their territory, we have ways, we have means of dealing with it: reciprocity. That is it. I will stop at that so that I don�t step on too many toes. But you can be sure that in our bilateral relations with any country, we will reciprocate. Reciprocity is certain as solution,” she stated in Abuja.
Ogwu recalled that on assumption of office nine months ago, she embarked on comprehensive reforms to “re-position, re-invent, renovate, restructure, re-engineer, renovate, and re-tool” the ministry to articulate and implement foreign policy.
The ministry will celebrate its golden jubilee this year and is already setting a new foreign policy agenda that would refocus it on “new themes, priorities, and challenges, such as poverty alleviation and combating pandemics, peace-keeping and peace-building, energy, organised crime, including human trafficking, fair trade, disarmament and human rights.”
About 544 officers have been redeployed from there to the office of the head of service who would decide what to do with them.
But President Olusegun Obasanjo has given Ogwu the approval to engage 80 officers whose degree qualification rank first class or second class upper.
The ministry, according to her, is now better placed to promote closer economic and political ties with other countries, in order to achieve Nigeria�s foreign policy goals of rapid economic growth.
She lamented the low funding for the ministry, but stressed that a stakeholders� forum that would help reshape foreign policy has been instituted.
Also at the briefing, the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry, Hakeem Baba Ahmed, said the ministry has investigated the case of the Defence Attache to the Nigerian High Commission in India, Captain G.A. Ojedokun, who was caught with over $2 million (N260 million) at the Indira Gandhi International Airport, New Delhi.
Ahmed, who recounted that he has been on the matter since the news broke, said there is no evidence from either India or Nigeria that Ojedokun was involved in crime.
His words: “Since that time, detailed explanation has been given about the source of the money, the officer has been released and the Nigerian and Indian authorities have been co-operating �.
“There was a need for some explanation to be given to the Indian authorities and it has been given to them. The officer is no more under detention.”