Nigeria Excluded From 2022 US Visa Lottery

Nigeria is the only African country currently excluded from participating in the 2022 US diversity visa (DV) lottery.

Online registration for the DV-2022 programme began on October 7, and will end on November 10, 2020.

While the details of Nigeria’s current exclusion are not different from that of the 2021 US DV lottery released in 2019, the ban dates back to 2015.

Before 2015, according to documents seen by The Cable, more than three million entries were received from Nigerians for the DV lottery in 2013 and 2014.

Within the same two-year period preceding 2015, among African countries, Nigerians were issued the second highest number of slots in the DV lottery — after Egypt; Nigerians received 5,741 visas for both years, while Egypt natives got 6,883 within the same period.

WHY ARE NIGERIANS NOT ELIGIBLE?

While no single country is allocated more than seven percent of the available DV slots for each year, Nigeria is currently missing from the 2022 list.

“Nigerians are no longer eligible for the Diversity Visa Lottery. Only people that were born outside of Nigeria or have parents that were born outside of Nigeria are eligible for the Diversity Visa. If you were born in Nigeria to Nigerian born parents, you are not eligible for the visa lottery,” a statement on the US embassy website read.

– The Cable