Many Nigerians who invested thousands of dollars in Caribbean countries’ ‘golden passports’ are facing uncertainty and potential financial losses after the United States and the European Union began crackdown on nations selling citizenship to unvetted foreign nationals.

For years, Caribbean nations have become hotspots for foreigners, including many Nigerians, who are running away from facing criminal charges at home or seeking to avoid travel restrictions because of weaker passports, by acquiring citizenship in those countries through investing certain amounts of money in a scheme dubbed Citizenship by Investment (CBI).

While the scheme was designed to attract foreign investors, many criminals or suspects of criminal investigations, who are at large from several nations, including Nigeria often seek refuge in those countries, paying between $125,000 to $250,000 to acquire second citizenship to circumvent legal sanctions and travel restrictions.

As countries across the West increasingly seek to limit migration, the United States and many European countries have started cracking down on Caribbean countries running CBI by refusing visas to several passport holders from the territories.

Nigerians that purchased the ‘golden passport’ are now lamenting money waste. One of them identified as Kafilat Alawiye told Peoples Gazette that her American visa application was recently denied after paying $208,000 to acquire Saint Kitts and Nevis passports.

Another 29-year-old Nigerian man who spoke on condition of anonymity told The Gazette that he paid $200,000 in 2023 to obtain an Antigua passport but was recently denied a visa to the United States. Caribbean passports for long were express entry tickets for individuals from Nigeria and other developing nations. 

Over the past decade, the credibility of the CBI programme has been tainted by criminal acts of individuals who took the route to escape prosecutions. These individuals include a former Minister of Petroleum Diezani Alison-Madueke, who purchased Dominica citizenship to evade justice in her multimillion-dollar laundering case in Nigeria.

In 2021, Nigerian couple entrepreneurs Gloria Igberaese and Muyiwa Folorunsho followed in the footsteps of Ms Alison-Madueke’s in purchasing Dominica passports after allegedly defrauding thousands of Nigerian investors over N1 billion in investment fraud, prompting Interpol to issue an international arrest warrants against them.

One of such instances caught the attention of Antigua and Barbuda Prime Minister Gaston Browne in the same year, ordering the arrest of Bamise and Elizabeth Ajetunmobi, the couple who fled Nigeria to the Caribbean Islands and bought golden passports after duping investors of over N22 billion.

“I have already put systems in place to ensure that if he is not here yet, they could capture him on his way here because Antigua and Barbuda is not going to be a refuge for scamps,” Mr Browne said.

These incidents and cases involving citizens of other countries have generated unwanted attention on the CBI scheme, which is currently subjected to intense scrutiny by European and U.S. regulators. These countries’ passports were being used as a gateway by criminals to enter their territories.

To curb the use of Caribbean channels to enter the United States, President Donald Trump recently added five countries with CBI programmes, including Antigua and Barbuda, Saint Lucia, Vanuatu, St. Kitts and Nevis, and Dominica to the list of new 36 nations under consideration for a potential travel ban.

Experts said most Caribbean nations don’t typically fit into the category of countries that the White House would ordinarily consider for a travel ban. However, several American officials fear individuals from places considered hostile toward the United States can exploit the route to evade the restrictions imposed on their primary passports.