UAE Reverses Visa Ban on Nigeria, Signs Billion-Dollar Investment Deal, President Says

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Nige­ri­ans are prais­ing the lift­ing of a visa ban by the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates fol­low­ing a meet­ing in Abu Dhabi this week between Pres­i­dent Bola Tin­ubu and Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates Pres­i­dent Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan.

Niger­ian author­i­ties also secured an invest­ment deal worth bil­lions of dol­lars, accord­ing to the presidency.

Niger­ian pres­i­den­tial spokesper­son Ajuri Nge­lale said Nige­ria and the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates have estab­lished a frame­work for invest­ments worth bil­lions of dol­lars across mul­ti­ple sec­tors, includ­ing defense and agriculture.

Speak­ing to Lagos-based Chan­nels Tele­vi­sion, Nge­lale said the pact also result­ed in the imme­di­ate lift­ing of a visa ban imposed by the UAE in Octo­ber 2022.

“What we’ve done today is to not only nor­mal­ize rela­tions but then to add new dimen­sions to that rela­tion­ship or part­ner­ship that are mutu­al­ly ben­e­fi­cial to both nations,” he said. “And I think as we move for­ward, the details of those invest­ments will become clear.”

The UAE imposed the visa ban on Nige­ria in con­nec­tion with a num­ber of diplo­mat­ic disputes.

Dubai’s Emi­rates air­line also sus­pend­ed flight oper­a­tions to Nige­ria over Abu­ja’s inabil­i­ty to send the UAE an esti­mat­ed $85 mil­lion in rev­enue that Dubai said had been blocked in the African nation. The monies could not be repa­tri­at­ed due to dol­lar shortages.

Addi­tion­al­ly, the UAE’s Eti­had Air­ways stopped flights to Nigeria.

But Nge­lale said Emi­rates and Eti­had air­lines are expect­ed to resume oper­a­tions imme­di­ate­ly with­out any pay­ment by the Niger­ian government.

The spokesper­son also said Tin­ubu suc­cess­ful­ly nego­ti­at­ed a new for­eign exchange liq­uid­i­ty pro­gram with the UAE.

Niger­ian experts such as econ­o­mist Eme­ka Orji wel­comed the pres­i­den­t’s move as a step that could reverse neg­a­tive eco­nom­ic trends.

“It should be a no-brain­er for them to reverse it,” Orji said. “The major chunk of their tourism, whether it is edu­ca­tion or for hol­i­days, Nige­ria would show up on the list of its major tourism income-earn­ing countries.”

In a recent state­ment, the UAE’s offi­cial Emi­rates News Agency not­ed that its leader and Tin­ubu explored oppor­tu­ni­ties for fur­ther bilat­er­al col­lab­o­ra­tion in areas that served the sus­tain­able eco­nom­ic growth of both countries.

The state­ment, how­ev­er, did not go into detail about the lift­ing of the visa ban on Nige­ri­ans and the resump­tion of flights.

Orji says there will be a pos­i­tive impact.

“Inter­na­tion­al rela­tions between the two coun­tries will like­ly lead to an increase in eco­nom­ic activ­i­ty,” he said. “There may be some inter­est in invest­ing in some sec­tors in Nige­ria. That would be an obvi­ous gain for Nigeria.”

For now, experts said they hope the new pact is ful­ly imple­ment­ed for both coun­tries to benefit.