Thank you very much.
My visit to Nigeria was very productive. I visited the capital city of Abuja, as well as the commercial capital city of Lagos. In Abuja I met the permanent secretary of the Ministry of Interior, and on the same day I met the Minister of Foreign Affairs for Nigeria. I was able to indicate to both officials what we were facing. I made it very clear that, overall, the number of Nigerians coming regularly to Canada is actually high. There are a lot of visitors and tourists as well as international students and people who come through the express entry system, as well as the provincial nominee program.
In fact, the number that is coming irregularly is smaller than the regular numbers. However, it is an issue, and I emphasized to them the need for that government to co-operate closely with Canada on the issue of reiterating the message that we are always making, which is that we welcome newcomers, but we want people to come through regular migration.
The second request I had of the Nigerian government was that they should work closely with us to expedite the issuing of travel documents for Nigerian nationals who have exhausted the procedures and are set to be removed from Canada. On both of those requests, the Nigerian government officials I met, including the foreign minister, were clearly supportive and indicated very clearly that they will work with us on both those issues.
Very quickly, I also met representatives of various media outlets in Nigeria to, again, make the point that we value the contributions that Nigerian Canadians have made to our country, but that irregular migration is an issue. I also met civil society organizations who were very kind to let me know some of the challenges, some of the misinformation that was being fed to some of these officials.