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The United Arab Emirates has lifted a 21-month long visa ban on Nigerians and introduced new rules requiring digital verification for Nigerian passport holders seeking its visas.
Nigeria’s information minister Mohammed Idris said Monday that the UAE’s decision to lift the ban that has been in place since October 2022 came after “mutually beneficial negotiations” between both governments. He referred to “updated controls and conditions” that prospective Nigerian visitors to the UAE must abide by.
Travelers will be required to submit documents proving their identity and showing travel history, among other things, in order to generate a verification number that would then be used to apply for a visa, according to a website of the Emirati government. An exception is granted for applicants 13 years or younger.
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The announcement ends a tense stand-off and resumes a much-sought after route for business and leisure travelers as trade has grown between both nations.
The UAE’s ban was premised on a number of factors, including allegations of improper conduct and attempts to circumvent visa rules. The row escalated when the Nigerian government cut back Emirates Airlines’s flights to Nigeria from 21 times a week to just once. It was supposedly in retaliation for the UAE’s refusal to allow Nigerian airliner Air Peace fly thrice a week to Dubai, approving only one weekly flight.
Emirates suspended its flight operations to Nigeria late 2022, blaming an inability to repatriate tens of millions of dollar earnings away from the country. But on taking office in May 2023 Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu began meeting with authorities, including Emirati president Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, to resolve the impasse.
The lifting of the ban this week was preceded by Emirates’s announcement in May that it would resume daily flights between Lagos and Dubai later this year in October.
“The Lagos-Dubai service has traditionally been popular with customers in Nigeria,” Adnan Kazim, deputy president and chief commercial officer for Emirates said in May. A feature of the resumption of the service is that Emirates will offer “more than 300 tonnes” of weekly cargo capacity in its passenger aircrafts’ lower deck in and out of Lagos.