The Nigerian ambassador was yesterday interviewed by gardaí investigating an alleged break-in at the embassy in Dublin last week.
Mardu Omaghomi was un- available for comment yesterday when The Irish Times visited the embassy in Dublin to ask her about the controversy surrounding a €400 charge being levied on Nigerian nationals applying for replacement passports.
An embassy official said: "The ambassador is talking to a police inspector about the break-in and will not be able to talk to the press today."
A break-in at the embassy is alleged to have taken place last Thursday. Money is said to have been taken and equipment damaged.
Meanwhile, protests have been taking place outside the embassy over the €400 Nigerians are being charged for replacement passports.
They say they have been asked to lodge the fee in a Nigerian embassy bank account and, although given receipts by the bank, they are then asked to hand these in to the embassy.
There has been an unprecedented demand for replacement passports among the Nigerian community here since the announcement in January by Minister for Justice Michael McDowell of new residency arrangements for the non-EU parents of children born here before January 1st.
According to the new arrangements, such parents may apply for residency on the basis of having an Irish-born child.
Among the items they must submit with their application is a passport or a national identity card.
The €400 charge being levied on Nigerian nationals by their embassy was "immediately identified as an issue that was going to cause huge problems", Catherine Cosgrave of the Coalition Against the Deportation of Irish Children said yesterday.
"One has to wonder where on earth an asylum-seeker in receipt of just €19 social welfare a week is going to get €400. We have sought a meeting with the Nigerian embassy about it as well as with the Department of Justice, but to no avail."
The Nigerian High Commission in London charges £54 for a new passport and £166 for a replacement.
Despite repeated phone calls, to the embassy yesterday no one was available to comment.
However, in an interview with the Street Journal magazine last month, Ms Omaghomi defended the €400 charge. "The passports are not expensive," she said.
The charge was a "punitive measure for people who lose their passports.
"The amount concerned is a deposit. If they recover their passports the money will be refunded to them but if they don't, they forfeit that money. But once we have issued a passport to you for that amount, you will lose that money."
A spokeswoman for the Department of Justice said up to yesterday evening there had been 8,500 applications for residency under the new arrangements. Of these 3,240 were from Nigerians.
A spokesperson for coalition against deporting children agreed that if all of these were from applicants who required a replacement passport, the Nigerian embassy would so far have taken in €1,296,000. The deadline for applications under the new arrangements is March 31st.
The Nigerian embassy, however, said on February 28th that it would take no further applications for replacement passports until further notice.
