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Nigeria accounted for the largest share of Grenada citizenship applications in Q4 2025.
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A Grenada passport can cost a family at least $235,000.
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Nigerians face limited visa-free access and high Schengen refusal rates.
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The EU has given five Caribbean states until 2028 to reform their citizenship schemes.
August 07, (THEWILL) — For a growing number of wealthy Nigerians, international travel has become an exercise in paperwork, rejection letters and lost money.
There is another route, though, if you have enough money: a second passport.
That is helping drive demand for citizenship-by-investment programmes in small Caribbean countries such as Grenada, where foreigners can obtain citizenship after making a qualifying investment.
Nigeria has become one of the biggest markets for the programme.
In the fourth quarter of 2025, Nigerians accounted for 16 per cent of Grenada’s citizenship applications, ahead of China, Iraq, the United States and Pakistan.
The attraction is easy to understand. A Nigerian passport currently offers visa-free or visa-on-arrival access to only a fraction of the destinations available to citizens of many developed countries.
For wealthy Nigerians whose businesses, children’s education, medical care or investments take them across borders regularly, every visa application can become another cost and another uncertainty.
Nigerian applicants recorded a 45.9 percent Schengen visa refusal rate in 2024, according to European Commission data analysed by Nairametrics. The global refusal rate was 14.8 percent.
A rejected application does not simply mean a cancelled holiday. Visa applicants can lose non-refundable fees, hotel deposits, flight reservations and, for business travellers, opportunities that depend on being able to get somewhere quickly.
That is where a Caribbean passport starts looking less like a luxury purchase and more like a mobility tool.
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What $235,000 Can Buy You
Grenada’s citizenship-by-investment programme offers applicants two main routes.
One requires a contribution to the country’s government fund, starting at $235,000 for a family of four.
The other involves a qualifying real estate investment beginning at $270,000.
For someone earning and spending in naira, that is a huge amount of money. At roughly ₦1,500 to the dollar, $235,000 translates to more than ₦350 million.
Nonetheless, wealthy Nigerians continue to apply.
Neringa Bulakiene, co-founder of international investment migration advisory firm Migronis, told Nairametrics that mobility is the main reason Grenada has become particularly attractive to Nigerians.
“The primary driver why Grenada has become a primary target for most Nigerians is mobility”, she said, pointing to the limited international access provided by the Nigerian passport.
Her colleague, Anastasia Zapevalova, said demand is largely connected to business travel, education and the ability to travel with family members more easily.
Those benefits are precisely what European authorities are now scrutinising.
The European Union has given Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, Saint Lucia, and Saint Kitts and Nevis until June 1, 2028, to reform or phase out their citizenship-by-investment programmes, warning that continued operation could put their visa-free access to the EU at risk.
That deadline matters because visa-free access to Europe is one of the attractions behind these passports.
For Nigerians buying Caribbean citizenship, the value is therefore tied partly to something they cannot control themselves. It depends on what other countries think about the passport they have bought.
Europe Is Questioning the Business Model
Caribbean governments see the issue differently.
For several small island states, citizenship-by-investment programmes have become an important source of government revenue and foreign investment.
A joint statement from the five Eastern Caribbean governments described the programmes as an important part of their economic resilience, saying revenues have supported infrastructure, healthcare, education, housing, climate resilience and fiscal stability.
That dependence helps explain why the programmes have remained attractive despite international scrutiny.
The European Commission, however, has raised concerns about security and due diligence.
In its report under the EU’s Visa Suspension Mechanism, it warned that investor citizenship schemes could allow people who would normally require visas to bypass standard checks and enter the Schengen area after acquiring a new nationality.
The concern is not that every person buying a Caribbean passport poses a security risk. Rather, European authorities are questioning whether citizenship can be purchased through investment effectively, while maintaining the same level of screening expected from people applying for visas.
That tension has put the unusual business model under pressure.
Countries that need foreign capital are selling citizenship. Wealthy individuals are buying mobility. Europe, which provides much of the value attached to those passports, is now deciding how much of that access it is willing to tolerate, and Nigerians are right in the middle of it.
READ ALSO: ‘Japa’ Costs Rise As UK Reviews Visa, Residency, Citizenship Fees
A Passport Has Become Part of Wealth Planning
The Caribbean programmes are part of a much wider investment migration industry.
Countries have spent years offering wealthy foreigners residency or citizenship in exchange for investment. Some programmes have since been tightened or scrapped.
Spain ended its Golden Visa programme in 2025, while Portugal removed real estate from its residency-by-investment route in 2023.
The United States has also introduced its own high-cost immigration pathway. In 2025, Donald Trump launched the $1 million “Gold Card” programme, requiring applicants to pay a $15,000 processing fee before making the contribution.
That tells us something about the market.
For people with enough money, nationality itself has increasingly become part of financial and family planning.
A second passport can offer easier travel, another place to educate children, access to international banking and investment opportunities, and a fallback if political or economic conditions deteriorate at home.
For Nigeria, however, the popularity of these programmes points to a less comfortable reality.
People are spending hundreds of millions of naira to solve a problem that ordinary passport holders cannot simply pay their way out of.
A stronger Nigerian passport would reduce the need for many of these purchases. Until then, the wealthy can buy alternatives.
The EU’s 2028 deadline now introduces another complication. The Caribbean passport market may still be lucrative, but the assumption that one additional passport can unlock the world indefinitely is becoming harder to sustain.
As Zapevalova put it, “The era of ‘one passport solves everything’ is almost gone.”
For wealthy Nigerians, that may mean the next investment is no longer simply another passport. It could be a combination of citizenships, residency permits, business bases and international assets designed to keep their options open.
That is an expensive solution to a very Nigerian problem.
Joy Onuorah is a business journalist and brand communications specialist covering financial markets, artificial intelligence, digital economy, and the ideas reshaping business across Africa and the global market. Beyond her reporting for TheWill, Joy uses brand strategy, storytelling, copywriting, and high-value SEO to help brands build lasting market authority.
