The Nigerian Passport, which is the official travel document of her citizens, is now ranked 101st out of 199 indexed countries. The ranking is based on the Henley Passport Index (HPI) which offers a hierarchical comparison of visa-free access of the passports of 199 countries to 227 travel destinations. It is generally considered the original and authoritative ranking of all the world’s passports with prioritized consideration of visa free access.
The 2021 Henley Passport Index ranks the Japanese passport as the most powerful in the world offering visa free access to 193 destinations followed by the Singaporean passport. Germany and South Korea are joint in second place with Finland, Italy, Luxembourg and Spain in joint fourth.
Henley and Partners, a UK based global citizenship and residence advisory firm, stated that the index was generated using exclusive data from the International Air Transport Association (IATA) who boast the largest and most accurate travel information database.
The company said that the dominance of European countries in the top 10 positions of the index has been an established phenomenon since the first indexing of 16 years ago. They further indicated that the per-eminence of three Asian countries in Japan, Singapore and South Korea has become the new normal.
Seychelles, with visa free access to 152 destinations, is the highest ranked African country and sits on 28th place on the HPI. Other highly ranked African countries include Mauritius (31st), South Africa (57th) and Botswana (66th).
Nigeria ranks below heir West African neighbors Gambia (80th), Cape Verde (81th) Ghana (84th), Sierra Leone (85th), Benin (86th), Burkina Faso (89th), Ivory Coast (91th), Senegal (92th), Togo and Guinea (93th), Niger, Mali and Chad (94th) as well as Guinea-Bissau (95th).
The Nigerian Passport is only higher than 7 countries on the African continent as per the Henley Passport Index, offering visa free access to just 46 countries.
