The U.S. Embassy in Nigeria has distanced itself from fake websites and messages advertising U.S. visa lottery.

In a statement made available on its official Facebook page on Friday, the U.S. mission, while warning that websites peddling advertisements of the visa lottery were fake, asked Nigerians to visit its official websites for accurate information on the lottery program .

The mission further urged Nigerians to discard information from web pages without the “.gov” address.

“The U.S. Mission to Nigeria is aware of websites and messages advertising the U.S. visa lottery. All of these sites are FAKE! The only accurate information on the visa lottery is available at ng.usembassy.gov and travel.state.gov. Addresses that have a .gov are the only accurate source of visa information,” the embassy in a statement said.

The diversity visa lottery which kick started in 1995 was established to diversify the immigrant population in the United States, by selecting applicants mostly from countries with low rates of immigration to the United States in the previous five years.

However, a statement earlier seen on the official website of the U.S. consulate in Nigeria had banned Nigerians from participating in its diversity visa lottery.

The statement said that Nigerians were “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.”