Nigeria’s Minister of Interior, Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, has described the Canadian Embassy’s denial of a visa to Nigeria’s Chief of Defence Staff, General Christopher Musa, as a disrespect to the country.
The visa denial was made known by Gen. Musa on Thursday at the maiden annual lecture of the National Association of the Institute for Security Studies, where he revealed that thr Canadian Embassy denied him and some members of his team visas to attend an event to honour war veterans in Canada.
The revelation led to a plethora of condemnation with the National Security Adviser, Nuhu Ribadu saying Canada can go to hell, amongst other condemnations for the act.
While weighing in on the issue, Tunji-Ojo, who was a guest on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily on Friday, also condemned the action by the Canadian Embassy, saying it shoes a lack of respect for Nigeria as a country, and wondered how an average Nigerian would be treated if the Chief of Defence Staff was disrespected in such a manner.
“Without knowing the full facts, I think even for us it is a policy, the issue of reciprocity as I always say, has to be given due consideration. As much as we are not ready to dabble into the sovereignty of other nations, the issue of visas, issue of migration management is a sovereign issue,” the minister said.
“As much as we don’t want to dabble into that, it is not a disrespect to the chief of defence staff, to me, without knowing the facts, it is disrespectful to the country, and it is disrespectful to us as a people. If that can happen to the chief of defence staff, then I am worried for an average Nigerian”.
The Minister added that the visa denial brouhaha has led him to struggle to find justification for the action by Canada, noting that even if there are questions the embassy needed to ask, there are diplomatic back channels in which that could have been done.
He stated that he is confident that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs will take the necessary steps to resolve the issue diplomatically and ensure that there is mutual respect between the two countries.