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Vice President Kashim Shettima has departed Abuja for Cotonou to represent President Bola Tinubu at the inauguration of Romuald Wadagni, President of the Republic of Benin.
Mr Stanley Nkwocha, Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Communications (Office of the Vice President), made this known in a statement on Saturday.
Nkwocha said Shettima would join other leaders across Africa and beyond at the event scheduled to take place at the Presidential Palace in Cotonou on Sunday, May 24.
He said that Benin and Nigeria share deep historical, socio-cultural, and economic ties, adding that their bilateral relations are frequently defined by border security, trade policies, and energy cooperation.
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Nkwocha said that the vice president, who is being accompanied by senior aides and top government functionaries, would return to Nigeria after his engagement in the Republic of Benin.
The Trump administration is closing off one of the most commonly used routes to permanent residency in the United States, announcing that foreign nationals on temporary visas — including hundreds of thousands of Nigerians — will be required to return to their home countries to apply for Green Cards rather than adjusting their status from inside the US.
US Citizenship and Immigration Services spelled out the policy shift in a statement Friday, framing it as a return to what the agency called the original intent of American immigration law. The practical consequence for people already living and working in the United States on student, tourist, or temporary worker visas is stark: the pathway they have long relied on to move from temporary to permanent status without leaving the country is being shut down.
For Nigerians, the directive lands with particular weight. Census Bureau figures put the Nigerian immigrant population in the United States at between 460,000 and 500,000. That community, which accounts for roughly one in ten African-born immigrants in the country, would be required to travel back to Nigeria to complete Green Card applications — a requirement that carries legal, financial and personal risk for people who may have built lives, careers and families on American soil.
USCIS was direct about its reasoning. The agency said the existing system had been designed with a clear purpose: temporary visa holders come for a defined reason, and when that reason expires, they leave. Staying in the country and using that presence as the foundation of a permanent residency application was never, the agency argued, what the law intended.
“The system is designed for them to leave when their visit is over,” the USCIS statement read. “Their visit should not function as the first step in the Green Card process.”
The agency also offered an administrative rationale, saying that routing these cases through State Department consular offices abroad would free up its own limited resources for other priorities — applications from victims of violent crime and human trafficking, naturalization petitions and cases that fall specifically within USCIS jurisdiction rather than the consular system.
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The move is the latest escalation in an immigration enforcement campaign that has defined the Trump administration’s domestic agenda. It follows a presidential proclamation earlier this year that barred Nigerians and nationals from 14 other countries from entering the United States across multiple visa categories, including tourist, student and Green Card holder classifications. The administration cited security concerns and difficulties in vetting Nigerian nationals as its justification for those restrictions.
That earlier measure targeted people seeking to enter the country. This new directive reaches into a different population — those already here, legally, on valid temporary status — and alters the terms under which they can pursue long-term legal residency. The combination of the two policies effectively tightens the vise from both directions: harder to get in, and now harder to stay.
