Nigeria To Digitalise Tourist Visa By Dec ~ Imigiration Boss

Nigeria will soon unveil its web-based visa for intended visitors to the country before the end of the year, head of the country’s Immigration Service has said.
The Comptroller-General of the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS), Muhammad Babandede to the country is going ahead to boost tourists by ensuring her visa process is digitalised.
Babandede said the digitalisation of tourist visas, which is ongoing, would further improve tourism and the ease of doing business in Nigeria as the tourist visa would be web-based.
“Everything will be digitalised with no physical contact with anybody. Once you apply online, upload your application, submit, pay, and get approval, you start coming and within 24-48 hours, you get your tourist’s visa,” he said.
The Immigration boss disclosed that Nigeria is quite liberal with tourists’ visa for people coming to the country for religious tourism.
“We give them visa-on-arrival for certain churches because we know their spending will boost our economy,” he said.
Babandede hinted that there are challenges in making tourists visa liberal because tourism has become the weakest link for entry into Nigeria.
However, he said, tourist visa will be possible without compromising national security.
The immigration boss said the Migration Information Data Analysis System (MIDAS) recently launched by the Minister of Interior, Rauf Aregbesola, will assist with statistics of tourists visiting Nigeria.
“The MIDAS will benefit a lot of people and organisations, tourism will benefit from this, we are hereby inviting the NTDC to feed tourism content and activity into the MIDAS system for overall best tourism experience and sustainable economic development in Nigeria,” he said.