Govt seeks abolition of visa among D-8 member nations

The Federal Government has called for the abolition of visa requirement among the members of the Developing Eight (D-8) Organization for Economic Co-operation to ensure free movement of people and trade.

The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, made the call when he met with the Secretary-General of the organisation, Dr. Seyed Ali-Mohammed, on Wednesday, in Abuja.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the D-8 countries are Nigeria, Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Malaysia, Pakistan and Turkey.

'One area that I think D8 must to work on and if really they want to succeed, they must make sure that there is no barrier in term of visa among those eight countries.

'You cannot grow any trade, still less tourism. If I cannot have easy access to Malaysia, Egypt, Iran, Pakistan. You can imagine the volume of trade that will develop overnight if only you can make sure that if I want to go to Iran that there is bilateral agreement between Nigeria and Iran, between Nigeria and Pakistan and among those eight countries that there will be free movement of people,' Mohammed said, adding that, 'it is the free movement of people that will guarantee free movement of trade.'