High net worth travellers cause visa on arrival upswing
The surge in high net worth travellers comprising foreign investors, business travellers and persons of international repute among others have led to upswing of visa on arrival at points of entry into Nigeria.
A top official of Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) said since the government approved visa on arrival process, there has been a huge application for it
He said the process was very easy for prospective visa applications to the country, adding that the cumbersome arrangement of going through the country’s high commissions or embassies before now made investors to find it extremely difficult to do business in Nigeria.
The official who spoke to Woleshadarenews on condition of anonymity said visa issuance had gone up by 25 per cent in the past six months to about 14, 000 from Lagos airport alone.
The source equally disclosed that the figure has gone up same way at Abuja Airport considerably almost at par with what is obtainable in Lagos.
Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS) at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, (MMIA) has issued about 13,000 Visas on arrival since last February.
The process of obtaining a Nigerian visa has been likened to a “camel passing through the eye of a needle.”
To visit, foreigners need to successfully navigate a maze of paperwork both before and after they get into the country. But that’s set to change, eventually.
As part of a 60-day plan to improve Nigeria’s business climate, the NIS reviewed the requirements for Nigerian visas to make them more customer friendly.”
To make entry smoother, the NIS will harmonize airport immigration forms to reduce the stress of paperwork for visitors. Visas on arrival are made available to high net-worth investors coming for urgent business and to visitors from countries without Nigerian consulates.
In addition, to make it easier for foreigners to obtain residence permits, NIS has opened 28 additional offices across the country.
New Telegraph learnt that most of the beneficiaries were investors coming into the country.
The source said the visa-on-arrival procedure was targeted at investors coming to Nigeria to do business as part of the Ease of Doing Business policy of the Federal Government.
“We have upgraded our visa-on-arrival from email-based to web-based to improve our services.
With Nigeria’s lowly rankings on World Bank’s Doing Business report stalled out in recent years, Nigeria’s government has made business reforms a priority and set up a presidential council to implement them. Of ten areas measured by the World Bank, Nigeria ranked in the bottom half in eight of them.
According to the source, the foreigners are issued visas valid for one month which can be extended for another month if the need arises.
The source, however, said some applicants often faced problems on arrival at the airport because they used third party emails to make the request or failed to provide all the required documents.
The source said that the Comptroller General of the NIS, Mr Mohammed Babandede, had directed that SERVICOM and anti-corruption desks should be set up at the airport to improve service delivery.
Visa-on-arrival policy began in Nigeria in 2012 alongside Kenya and a few African countries, but came into full stream with the introduction of the ease of doing business policy by the Federal Government in May 2017.
Getting a visa to visit another African country has typically meant being buried in a mountain of paperwork and also expensive visa fees.
When procured, the visas are typically only for a short duration. Even then, getting the visa isn’t enough to stave off extra hassles at entry points no thanks to the suspicions of immigration officers who sometimes appear bemused that another African is visiting their country as a tourist.
But this year, in line with recommendations by the African Development Bank (AfDB) in its Africa Visa Openness report, more countries have begun making it a lot easier for other Africans to visit.
