My Mission in Nigeria, By Gozney
By Paul Ohia
The British High Commis-sioner to Nigeria, Mr. Richard Gozney, has said that he hopes to work in concert with his home country to eliminate poverty and focus on African millennium development goal which has made Nigeria loom very large in the foreign policy of Prime Minister Tony Blair's government.
The envoy who paid a courtesy visit to THISDAY corporate headquarters in Lagos yesterday added that this is necessary because Nigeria has demonstrated enough moral will in Africa's developmental policies epitomised by the New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD) and similar initiatives.
According to him, the NEPAD initiative influenced Blair's decision to create the Commission for Africa with a Nigerian, Mr. Fola Adeola, appointed a member.
"I want to focus on helping African countries to help themselves in the systems designed and pursued by them, helping the government to implement necessary reforms because this century could be that of Africa because of Nigeria's numerical strength and South Africa's economic power,"he said.
The Commission for Africa,the envoy explained, is meant to illuminate to the world what the continent has in mind for itself and this is to be made by members of the commission chosen from all walks of life.
"Africa will be a priority during the UK's 2005 chairmanship of the G8 and the presidency of the European Union,and the commission will present its findings to the G8 summit in July of that year," he stated.
According to him the 17-member commission set out its agenda to look at a broad range of issues through seminars ,debates and consultation with experts and thinkers with themes on the economy, conflict resolution, peace-building and human development.
Gozney also said that his tenure will witness a new regime of visa issuance whereby Nigerians will no longer stay on queues for long hours but rather have their documents collected at various centres designated by the embassy.
"We realised that the process is difficult but we are trying to make it very simple and maintain a situation whereby 70% of applicants are issued visa and also eliminate the bottleneck caused by touts and those that come with forged documents," he said.
He warned the courier organisations entrusted with the collection of visa applications against flouting the agreements by tampering with applicants' documents.
According to Gozney, Advance Fee Fraud(419) has done a lot of damage to Nigeria's image in London that any measures taken to forestall its occurrence , like careful screening of immigrants, should be applauded by those on genuine missions to Britain.
He also maintained that recent immigrant policies of his country are not antagonistic to Nigeria but meant to check foreign nationals who flout the rules governing the working holiday permit given to them.
"Rather than have a huge number of people entering the UK illegally,we try to limit it at an early stage before it becomes a political issue", he said. The envoy observed that Britons have a zero percent birth rate and therefore realise that the good economy that exists now can thrive on immigrants.
The envoy said that the situation in the Niger Delta region will remain of significance to his country because the Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) is a British venture and has lots of its staff coming from UK.Moreover,he continued, 19 percent of British oil and gas come from the area.
On the level of trade between Nigeria and Britain, Gozney said that for the meantime his country may not have much need for Nigeria's oil and gas but will do so in future and this accounts for the present low level of trade.
He recalled that they attacked Iran with chemical weapon and repeated the same thing to its citizen at the northern part of the country.
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