The United Arab Emirates has lifted a 21-month long visa ban on Nigerians.
It comes after a series of false starts after President Bola Ahmed Tinubu took office in May 2023 and began meeting with authorities, including Emirati president Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, to resolve the impasse.
Originally breaking the news on Monday, Nigeria’s Information Minister Mohammed Idris said the UAE’s decision 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.
The ban was imposed in October 2022.
Aviation Minister, Festus Keyamo, confirmed the development in a Monday tweet:
“Following the announcement of the resumption of issuance of UAE visas to Nigerians and the resumption of direct flights between both countries, earlier this evening I held a private meeting with the UAE ambassador to Nigeria, Salem Saeed Al-Shamsi to fine-tune some modalities for the resumption of these activities in view of the newly-established rapprochement.”
Part of the conditions for unbanning travel from West Africa’s largest population includes the introducing of new rules requiring digital verification for Nigerian passport holders seeking its visas.
Now travellers 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.
It, however, granted exemptions for applicants 13 years or younger.
The UAE slammed the ban due to 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, as reprisal for 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 millions of dollar earnings out of Nigeria.
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.
