Nigeria’s passport has climbed to 89th place in the latest Henley Passport Index, improving from 94th in 2025 and extending visa-free access to 44 countries. The 2026 ranking, released on 6 May, places the Nigerian passport above its recent finishes of 95th in 2024, 97th in 2023 and 98th in 2022, though it remains far from the 62nd position it reached in 2006.
The index ranks 199 passports on how much travel access they provide across 227 destinations without a visa, and Nigeria’s move matters because the country has spent years trying to repair a passport system long criticized for racketeering, shortages, opaque processing, delays and the non-collection of printed passports. Under the Nigeria Immigration Service, led by Controller-General Kemi Nanna Nandap and supervised by Interior Minister Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, the government has pushed digitalisation, simplified application steps, opened new passport offices and introduced digital payment and tracking facilities, while a warning that alternative passport platforms are fraudulent remains a reminder of how much distrust still surrounds the process.
Even with the gain, Nigeria is still well below Africa’s leading passports, with Seychelles in 22nd place and Mauritius in 25th, and also behind other African countries that ranked higher, including Niger, Mali, Gabon, Cameroon, Egypt, Liberia, Chad and Burkina Faso. At the top of the global table, Singapore, Japan and South Korea held the strongest passports, while Afghanistan was at 101st place with access to only 23 countries. The United Kingdom ranked 6th with visa-free access to 183 countries, Canada and Australia were 7th with 182 countries, and Iceland and the United States were 10th with access to 179 countries.
For Nigeria, the 2026 rise is real progress, but it is still a measure of how much ground the passport must cover before it approaches the strength the country had nearly two decades ago.
