Before you read further
Nigeria's visa policy changes often enough that no static guide can be your final word on it. Every requirement, fee, and processing time below carries the date it was checked, and you should re-verify anything time-sensitive directly on the Nigeria Immigration Service's own portals — immigration.gov.ng, evisa.immigration.gov.ng, and visa.immigration.gov.ng — before you book travel or a return flight, since these are the same portals the service itself directs applicants to for visa status and payment S1S2
Do you need a visa at all
If you hold citizenship of an ECOWAS member state — Benin, Burkina Faso, Cabo Verde, Côte d'Ivoire, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Niger, Senegal, Sierra Leone, or Togo — you can enter Nigeria without a visa for up to 90 days under the ECOWAS Protocol on Free Movement of Persons, Residence and Establishment, which states that a Community citizen "visiting any Member State for a period not exceeding ninety (90) days shall enter the territory of that Member State through the official entry point free of visa requirements" S5. If you extend your stay beyond 90 days you will need local authorisation, and if you are not an ECOWAS citizen you should assume you need a visa unless you have separately confirmed a bilateral exemption with Nigerian authorities, since exemption arrangements with individual non-ECOWAS countries have been added and removed over time S1
Visa categories: e-Visa versus embassy visa
For most short stays, Nigeria's e-Visa system, applied for at evisa.immigration.gov.ng, is your starting point, and as of the immigration service's own visa-category listing it covers dozens of specific short-stay purposes rather than one generic "tourist visa" — separate categories exist for standard tourism, business (including a single-entry 30-day option and a longer multiple-entry option for high-value investors), sports, creative arts, study tours, cultural exchange, and emergency or relief work, each carrying its own validity window S2. Longer or more specialised needs — diplomatic status, journalism, religious or medical-tourism stays, employment, study, or permanent residence — generally route through the regular embassy-visa process at visa.immigration.gov.ng rather than the e-Visa portal, and some of these categories run for up to five years with defined per-visit stay limits S2. Applicants from a number of countries are excluded from applying through the online e-Visa system altogether; nationals of countries including Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Russia, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, and Yemen were reported as unable to access the e-Visa portal as of 2025 reporting, so travellers from those countries should contact a Nigerian embassy or high commission directly rather than assuming e-Visa eligibility S1
How the e-Visa process works, and how long it takes
You apply online, upload the required supporting documents, pay by credit or debit card, and — according to the Nigeria Immigration Service's own FAQ, accessed 24 July 2026 — e-Visas are "approved within 48hrs," though the same FAQ warns that "high-volume seasons or incomplete documentation can delay approval" S3. The service itself recommends submitting your application two to four weeks ahead of travel rather than relying on the 48-hour figure as a guarantee, which is sensible given that the stated timeframe is a target rather than a contractual commitment S3. Because the immigration service's own site did not make a full, itemised document checklist available to this guide at time of writing, confirm the exact document list for your specific visa category directly on the e-Visa portal before you start an application, rather than assuming a generic list applies S3
What it actually costs
This is the area where you most need to independently verify before paying anything. The Nigeria Immigration Service's own fee pages did not render a specific figure for this guide, so the numbers below are as reported by two independent, non-governmental visa-information and visa-assistance websites, not confirmed on an official government page: one site, last updated in March 2026, reports a single-entry tourist e-Visa (up to 90 days) at around US$79 and a single-entry business e-Visa at around US$160, rising for longer multiple-entry validities S6. A separate commercial visa-assistance site, publishing in September 2025, reports comparable official immigration fees varying by nationality — for example around US$160 for United States citizens and US$58 for South African citizens on a single-entry basis — plus its own additional service and biometrics charges that are specific to that company and not a government fee S7. Because these two figures come from commercial or informational third parties rather than immigration.gov.ng itself, and because visa fees are exactly the kind of detail governments revise without much notice, do not rely on either number for actual payment planning — check the fee displayed inside the official application portal at evisa.immigration.gov.ng at the time you apply, which is also where the immigration service directs applicants to pay S1S2
The landing and exit card — a separate, mandatory step
Since 1 May 2025, Nigeria has required a separate online Landing/Exit Card for every traveller entering or leaving the country, regardless of whether you needed a visa to enter S1S4. The Nigeria Immigration Service's own portal FAQ states plainly that "all foreigners visiting or departing Nigeria must use this portal to pre-process their arrival and departure by providing their visa or passport numbers," that the service is "completely free," and that each traveller — transit passengers excepted — must submit their own individual form before arriving at or leaving a Nigerian port of entry S4. Arriving without having completed this card, even if your visa itself is in order, risks being refused entry or exit at the immigration checkpoint, so treat it as a mandatory pre-departure task alongside your visa, not an optional convenience S4
Practical advice
Because Nigeria's visa system has moved substantially online since 2025 — through the e-Visa portal, the separate landing/exit card system, and a periodic amnesty programme for irregular-status travellers — assume that any visa guidance more than a few months old, including parts of this article, may already be superseded, and cross-check against the official portals directly S1. If your itinerary includes destinations such as yankari national park in Bauchi State or obudu mountain resort in Cross River State, note that domestic travel within Nigeria is unaffected by your entry visa category, but your visa's validity window and permitted purpose (tourism versus business, for instance) should match your actual plans, since immigration officers can and do check this on exit as well as entry S2
For related overviews, see top travel destinations, geography of nigeria, and nigeria climate zones.