In a ranking of all passports over the past 17 years, the Nigerian passport has dropped 38 positions.
According to data compiled by The PUNCH from Henley Passport Index studies between 2006 and 2022,
The Henley Passport Index assigns a score to each passport based on how many countries its owners can enter without a visa or through a program that grants them one upon arrival.
Nigerian passport holders now have access to 11 more countries, although their ranking dropped from 62 to 100 between 2006 and 2022.
This demonstrates a consistent weakening across the 199 countries and 227 tourism destinations examined.
Despite the fact that 46 countries now accept green passport holders without a visa or with a visa on arrival, up from 35 in 2006, Nigerians are still unable to travel to more than 181 other countries.
Travelers with Nigerian passports will only be able to enter 25 nations without a visa as of September 2022.
However, when visa-on-arrival or e-visa programs are included, the total increases to at least 46 locations.
At the time of writing, the following nations allowed Nigerians entry without a visa, with a visa issued at the airport, or with an electronic visa: Benin Republic, Burkina Faso, Cameroun, Cabo Verde, Chad, Comoros, Côte d’Ivoire, Djibouti, Ethiopia, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Mali, Maur
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Iran, Kyrgyzstan, the Maldives, Timor-Leste, Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Dominica, Haiti, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Suriname, Fiji, Micronesia, Tuvalu, and Vanuatu are some additional nations.
Experts said, however, that the green document’s strength simply reflected Nigeria’s internal problems.
Charles Onunaiju, Research Director at the Centre for China Studies in Abuja, made the claim that Nigerians’ paltry access to countries without a visa symbolizes the internal problems the nation is going through under the current administration in an earlier conversation with our reporter.
We face a problem, he remarked. There is a desperate desire to leave Nigeria because it is becoming uninhabitable, especially for young people with no opportunities.
Nearly all embassies are now imposing rules on Nigerians that they don’t place on other nationals. That much is obvious. People get the impression that practically of Nigerians desire to flee. That’s partially accurate because the country has abused its potential. The enormous human resources at our disposal have not been fully utilized by our leaders.
“We must start at home if we hope to gain respect from others. Get your acts together if you want the world to take you seriously.
The Nigeria Immigration Service, which issues passports for Nigeria, thought otherwise.
According to that, visa-free travel is mostly a result of
bilateral pacts among nations and among regional blocs.
This rating is based on passport admissibility, according to NIS spokesperson Amos Okpu, who earlier spoke with our correspondent about the subject. And that is largely a result of international understanding and reciprocity, which does not always accurately reflect the genuine value of a passport. The European Union and the ECOWAS are two good examples.
Although we value the work done by Henley & Partners, we are more focused on improving our passport technology to satisfy ICAO criteria and making sure that our passport conforms with their regulations.
Okpu claimed that Nigeria holds a respectable standing in the comity of countries because it has been a public Key Directory of the ICAO since April 2009.
A central location for transferring the data needed to authenticate electronic Machine-Readable Travel Documents including e-Passports, electronic ID cards, and Visible Digital Seals is the Public Key Directory.
Okpu stated, “What we place greater emphasis on here is our standing in the ICAO,” defending the NIS’ stance. We start working as soon as ICAO informs us of any issues with our passports. Nigeria joined the Public Key Directory in 2009, but it wasn’t until we complied with various passport security requirements that we were listed there.
