Seventy-Five Nigerians Screened for Saint Lucia's Investment Citizenship

Data from the Saint Lucia Citizenship by Investment Unit Annual Report for 2023-2024, released in late April 2026, reveals that a minimum of 75 Nigerian nationals underwent screening by due diligence firms for the country's Citizenship by Investment Programme during the 2023/2024 financial year. Investigations by Sunday PUNCH highlighted Nigeria as the sole African nation featured among the primary source countries participating in this 'passport-for-cash' initiative.

Between April 2023 and March 2024, the due diligence company Exiger evaluated 1,995 main applicants and their dependents, stemming from 1,164 orders submitted by the Citizenship by Investment Unit. Among these, Nigerians constituted 75 subjects, positioning the country as the seventh-highest source. This placed Nigeria behind China (548), the United Arab Emirates (412), Iraq (221), Saudi Arabia (156), Qatar (94), and Syria (84). However, Nigeria surpassed Turkey (72), Egypt (70), Lebanon (67), Jordan (57), the United Kingdom (51), and the United States (54).

To qualify for Saint Lucia's investment citizenship, applicants must fulfill specific financial commitments. These include a minimum non-refundable donation of $240,000 to the National Economic Fund (NEF), or an investment of $300,000 in government bonds or pre-approved real estate. Other options involve a $250,000 contribution to infrastructure projects or a $1 million investment in a qualifying business. Additionally, main applicants incur a $2,000 processing fee and an $8,000 due diligence fee, while dependents are charged $1,000 and $5,000 for these respective fees.

Employing the most economical route, the NEF donation, a conservative projection suggests that if half of the 75 Nigerian subjects screened by Exiger were principal applicants, Nigerians could have contributed over $9 million in minimum donations alone within the financial year. This figure excludes processing and due diligence fees, real estate premiums, or the commissions paid to promoters and authorized marketing agents.

Applications from Nigeria contributed to a significant increase in Saint Lucia's CIU activity, which saw a total of 5,642 citizenship applications in the 2023/2024 fiscal year. This represents a substantial 424 percent surge from the 1,076 applications received in the preceding year, as detailed in the annual report. The report also indicated that “The Programme achieved unprecedented success, with total revenue reaching EC$240.3M, a 296 per cent increase from the previous year,” attributing this growth largely to a remarkable rise in Real Estate Investment applications.

The unit recorded a surplus of EC$89.9 million (approximately $33.3 million), marking a 294 percent increase from EC$22.8 million in the previous year. Out of the applications processed, 1,171 were granted citizenship, while 77 were denied. Exiger’s risk assessment categorized 70 percent of screened individuals as low risk, 26 percent as medium risk, and four percent as high risk.

Other due diligence partners, BDO and FACT, provided regional rather than country-specific data for some of their caseloads. BDO, primarily handling Middle East and North Africa cases, reported that 58.15 percent of its workload originated from MENA, 26.93 percent from China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, and 6.86 percent from Africa generally, without specifying individual African nations. FACT indicated that its most frequent applications came from Iraq, China, Syria, Egypt, and Lebanon, processing 420 applications, conducting 225 interviews, and flagging 16 cases (3 percent) as high risk across Iraq, China, Egypt, Pakistan, Libya, and Yemen.

This disclosure comes approximately a year after President Bola Tinubu's visit to Saint Lucia in July 2025, marking the first time a sitting Nigerian president toured the Eastern Caribbean nation. Citizenship by investment, often referred to as 'golden passport' schemes, allows foreign nationals to secure citizenship through a qualifying financial contribution, thereby circumventing the extensive residency requirements typically associated with conventional naturalization. Saint Lucia’s CIP, established in 2015, is one of five such Caribbean initiatives—alongside St Kitts and Nevis, Dominica, Grenada, and Antigua and Barbuda—that have attracted affluent applicants from Asia, the Middle East, and Africa seeking advantages like visa-free travel, tax planning, or alternative residency options.