The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has announced a fresh round of visa restrictions targeting Nigerian nationals, further tightening travel requirements just a year after lifting a previous visa ban.
According to a directive issued to travel agents on Tuesday, Nigerian citizens aged between 18 and 45 years are now ineligible to apply for a tourist visa unless they are accompanied. In addition, the UAE has suspended the issuance of transit visas to Nigerian travellers altogether.
A notice from Dubai immigration reads: “For Nigerian nationals, please bear in mind that an applicant aged 18 to 45 years travelling alone is not eligible for the tourist visa category.”
Furthermore, the directive stipulates that Nigerian applicants aged 45 and above must provide a personal bank statement—spanning the last six months—with each month’s closing balance reflecting a minimum of $10,000 or its naira equivalent. This financial requirement is now a mandatory condition in addition to existing documentation such as hotel bookings and passport data pages.
This development follows the partial resolution of a two-year visa ban in 2023, which saw the UAE re-open its borders to Nigerian citizens under more controlled terms. However, travel agents have raised concerns that the situation is now deteriorating further, with expectations of even stricter regulations in the coming days.
The latest measures signal a significant escalation in visa controls and underscore the increasingly complex nature of UAE-Nigeria travel relations.
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