Nigeria Citizenship by Investment

There is no capital threshold to record, because there is no investment route to have one — and the agency publishes no capital figure for the document that does exist either.

Neither the CERPAC page nor the home page of the Nigeria Immigration Service mentions investment, capital or a sum in millions, and neither names the national currency.

What the agency does publish is a fee scale by status rather than a capital threshold: an employed foreigner pays USD 2,000, a student USD 600, and a person married to a Nigerian citizen pays nothing at all — the agency uses the word “gratis”.

Those three figures measure the applicant's standing, not the money they bring.

As to the constitutional amendment bill after which this record is named, no figure is inferred here: the text of the bill itself has not been verified at source, and a capital threshold means something only when read in the instrument that creates it.

What the Nigeria Immigration Service actually issues is a residence card, not citizenship. The instrument is the Combined Expatriate Residence Permit and Aliens Card, CERPAC, issued to foreigners residing or employed in Nigeria and serving as proof both of lawful residence and of identity.

Its legal basis is sections 37, 38 and 39 of the Immigration Act 2015, governing residency, employment and revocation of a residence permit, together with sections 11, 12, 13 and 14 of the Immigration Regulations 2017, which empower the Service to issue residence cards.

Among the twelve CERPAC classes listed there is one for investors, coded N3 "Investors Visa", alongside N4A for highly skilled immigrants, N5A and N5B for retirees, N1A for spouses of Nigerian citizens, and N2A for a Nigerian by birth who renounced Nigerian citizenship.

The investment route in Nigeria therefore stops at residence.

On the scope of this finding: it rests on the Service front page and the CERPAC page; the front-page navigation contains no page on citizenship or naturalisation, and the front page does not mention investment or naturalisation.

The programme name this record carries is a constitutional amendment bill, not an instrument in force

The agency publishes the process but not the time, and those are different things — this is where a reader most easily believes they know something they do not.

The CERPAC page prints all five steps: submit an online application through the Service's portal; upload the required documents; pay the applicable fees online; provide biometric data, fingerprints and photograph, at a designated office; and the Service processes the application and verifies the documents.

Those five steps say what must be done and in what order, but not one of them carries a time marker.

Neither the CERPAC page nor the agency's home page states any processing time, whether in days or in weeks.

The only thing in the time family the agency does state is an entry condition rather than an output deadline: a foreigner must wish to reside in Nigeria for a period of not less than one year to be eligible for a CERPAC at all.

The CERPAC residence condition is measured by intended length of stay rather than by money.

A foreigner wishing to reside in Nigeria for a period not less than one year may be eligible for a CERPAC, and the purpose of the card is to allow foreigners to live and work legally in Nigeria for an extended period, usually one year and above, subject to renewal.

It covers those entering on a Temporary or Permanent Resident Visa and falls into five groups:

Business owners, being foreigners who own businesses in Nigeria; employees of Nigerian companies; foreign students studying in Nigeria; dependants of foreigners residing in Nigeria; and retirees, specifically foreigners aged 65 and above wishing to reside in Nigeria after their years of service.

The process runs through an online application on the Service portal, uploading a valid passport bearing a Nigerian visa together with proof of employment, business registration or student status, and payment of the fees online.

Then comes the provision of biometric data, fingerprints and photograph, at a designated service office, so the process cannot be completed remotely.

The authority names three benefits of the card: confirmation of lawful residence, a form of identification, and help in complying with Nigerian immigration regulations

The agency names the dependants category but publishes no definition of it, and that is a finding read from the page rather than an unresearched gap.

The Nigeria Immigration Service CERPAC page lists exactly five eligible groups, the fourth being “Dependents: Dependents of foreigners residing in Nigeria”, alongside Business Owners, Employees, Students and Retirees aged 65 and above.

Yet the page does not define a dependant: it does not mention children or family, and mentions a spouse only in the name of a different permit type.

There is no age limit, no definition of the relationship, and no separate document list for this group. The twelve CERPAC types make the gap plainer still: there is an N3 Investors Visa and an N1A Spouse of Nigerian Citizens Visa, but no type at all for the dependant of a resident foreign national.

The dependant therefore travels on eligibility group four without a permit code of their own. The one family-related concession does not reach an investor's family either: a foreigner married to a Nigerian citizen pays nothing, the agency using the word “gratis”, while an employed foreigner pays USD 2,000 and a student USD 600.

A person granted citizenship under this programme receives the Nigeria passport, so the figure in this cell is the figure for that passport itself.

According to the Passport Index of Prosperous Intelligence, on data dated 30 September 2026, the Nigeria passport reaches 38 destinations without applying for a consular visa in advance. The figure combines three forms of entry and does not count an e-Visa that must be obtained beforehand:

It is therefore a measure of how easily the holder travels, not a count of visa-free countries in the narrow sense.

For comparison, on the same source and the same method of counting, the Vietnamese passport reaches 44 destinations. The two lists of destinations do not nest inside one another, so the difference is an indication rather than a list of places newly opened.

Prosperous Intelligence dates its data and advises checking with the destination’s official authorities before travelling.

The statute that now underpins the whole Nigerian tax system does not tie any tax obligation to nationality.

The Nigeria Tax Act 2025, Act No. 7 of 2025, published in Federal Republic of Nigeria Official Gazette Volume 112 No. 117 of 26 June 2025 and bearing a commencement date of 1 January 2026, contains no provision referring to citizens or citizenship.

Section 12 treats the income, profits or gains of an individual who is a resident of Nigeria as arising in Nigeria and taxable in Nigeria wherever they arise, and whether or not they have been brought into or received in Nigeria. The definition of a resident individual has six limbs: having a domicile in Nigeria.

Having a permanent home available for family living in Nigeria. Having a habitual abode in Nigeria; having substantial economic and immediate family ties in Nigeria. Staying in Nigeria for an aggregate of not less than 183 days in any twelve-month period, including leave and temporary absences; or being a Nigerian diplomat serving abroad.

None of those limbs is nationality, and the definition of a non-resident individual mirrors them.

Section 58 with Schedule 4 sets the personal income tax scale at 0 percent on the first 800,000 naira, then 15 percent on the next 2,200,000, 18 percent on the next 9,000,000, 21 percent on the next 13,000,000, 23 percent on the next 25,000,000 and 25 percent above 50,000,000 naira; section 147 sets value added tax at 7.5 percent.

One point larger than the tax cell: Chapter III of the 1999 Constitution sets out a closed list of routes into citizenship, namely birth, registration and naturalisation, and the Constitution mentions investment only in a provision on the executive power of a state, with no bearing on citizenship.

CERPAC fees are set by the status of the applicant rather than by the term of the card, and the schedule runs to three lines. An employed foreigner pays USD 2,000. A student pays USD 600.

A foreigner married to a Nigerian citizen pays nothing at all — the authority uses the word "gratis". A gap of more than threefold between the employment line and the student line, with a third line at zero, marks these out as policy classifications rather than service charges priced to the cost of processing.

Fees are paid online, and payment is the third of five steps, after the online application and document upload and before the capture of biometric data at a Service office.

The figures should be read with their scope in mind: these are the fees of a residence card, not the cost of a citizenship by investment programme — the Nigeria Immigration Service publishes no such programme