Did The United States Force 300,000 Venezuelan Deportees On Nigeria?

On July 11, 2025, a verified user on X claimed that the United States government has given its Nigerian counterpart a condition for lifting the recent ban imposed on the country by accepting 300,000 Venezuelan deportees. The post is captioned, “REPORTEDLY: US 🇺🇸 has insisted that Nigeria must take 300,000 Venezuela deportees as a condition for lifting the recent visa ban Aside blackmail, why Nigeria?”.

This claim had over 301,000 views and about 4,200 replies, reposts, quotes, likes and bookmarks, as of when this report was published. @swagnito wrote “Until Trump bans all of you from entering his country for peddling fake news na then una go rest.” while @holerk said “There is no 300,000 Venezuela in United State that needs to be deported.  Stop this propaganda”.

VERIFICATION

Nigeria’s Foreign Minister, Yusuf Tuggar, confirmed the U.S. had made broad requests to multiple African countries to accept deported Venezuelan nationals, including ex-prisoners from the U.S. While Tuggar did not specify if the U.S. was applying pressure to any country to comply, he emphasised that Nigeria, with over 230 million people, could not comply due to domestic challenges.

He was quoted by The Vanguard Nigeria and BBC saying, “it will be unfair to insist that Nigeria accepts 300 Venezuelan deportees”. This is significantly less that  the 300,000 claimed in the X post. Meanwhile, no credible source has reported that the U.S. set a specific demand of 300,000 deportees tied to a visa policy for specific African countries.

Visa Restrictions Were Explained Differently by the U.S.

Recently, the U.S. imposed new visa restrictions on Nigerians, limiting non-immigrant visas to single-entry three-month durations, as part of what it calls a global reciprocity review. 

A press statement from the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria also states that the new three-month, single-entry visa policy was part of a regular global technical/security review, not political pressure over deportees.

The U.S. Mission in Nigeria said the shift to single-entry, three-month non‑immigrant visas for Nigerian applicants stems from a “technical and security-based evaluation”, part of a broader global review of visa security standards. According to the U.S. State Department, the policy aligns with “global technical and security benchmarks”, aimed at protecting the integrity of U.S. immigration systems, and is not a reaction to Nigeria’s membership in BRICS or its stance on deportees

CONCLUSION

The claim made that the United States government has given its Nigerian counterpart a condition for lifting its recent ban imposed on the country by accepting 300,000 Venezuelan deportees is FALSE. In his comment, Nigeria’s Foreign Minister, Yusuf Tuggar, mentioned 300 Venezuelan deportees, not 300,000, and this was his own caution, not an exact figure. The United States also clarified that the new policy is part of what it calls a global reciprocity review, not a punishment.