Simon Ateba is Chief White House Correspondent for Today News Africa. Simon covers President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, the U.S. government, the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and other financial and international institutions in Washington D.C. and New York City.
Neither the US travel ban nor the damning assessment of corruption under his leadership could dampen his mood. Not even the massacre by Boko Haram terrorists of several soldiers. Nigerian leader, Muhammadu Buhari, returned to Abuja on Thursday upbeat, after attending the UK-Africa summit in London.
As he arrived in Abuja, Mr. Buhari waved to supporters, perhaps not giving too much attention to reports U.S. President Donald Trump would be slamming Nigeria with visa restrictions as early as Monday.
The Nigerian leader who promised to kill corruption before it kills Nigeria returned home the same day Transparency International scored his anti-corruption fight 26 over 100, and ranked Nigeria 146th out 180 countries surveyed in its corruption perceptions index for 2019.
President Donald Trump on Wednesday confirmed he would be extending travel bans on additional countries.
“Our country has to be safe,” Mr. Trump said at a news conference at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
President Trump is expected to issue the executive order on the travel ban on Monday.
He is planning to place a travel ban on Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, as well as Sudan, Tanzania and Eritrea. Other countries to be affected are the Asian nations of Kyrgyzstan and Myanmar as well as the European country of Belarus.
The planned visa restriction, which may be interpreted as an indictment of the Buhari administration’s failure to defeat Boko Haram, respect human rights and protect the rights of Christians and other citizens as Trump demanded during a White House meeting in 2018, comes even as Nigeria has also closed its borders to neighboring countries, saying it was, like Trump also claims, to protect Nigerian citizens and the Nigerian economy.
