Expatriates working or doing business in Nigeria may sometimes decide to apply for citizenship naturalization or permanent residency in another country. For example, an Israeli, Indian, Chinese or Lebanese person living in Nigeria may be interested in applying for citizenship or naturalization in a European country such as Portugal, Belgium, Luxembourg or the Netherlands. In other to achieve this, it is often required to apostille certain documents related to their application – such as birth certificate, marriage certificate, and most importantly a police character certificate (which is basically a police report of good conduct showing that a person does not have any criminal record in Nigeria).
If your birth certificate was issued in your home country or in any country other than Nigeria, then you may need to apostille the birth certificate in the country where it was issued. As for your marriage certificate (assuming you are seeking joint citizenship or naturalization with your spouse), it is only possible to apostille the marriage certificate if you got married in Nigeria and had the marriage certificate issued by a marriage registry or court in any part of Nigeria.
The police character certificate will certainly need to be apostilled in Nigeria insofar as you have lived and worked in Nigeria for a period not less than 3 months. You will need to first obtain the police character certificate at the divisional headquarters of the Nigerian Police in your state of residence – where they will take your passport photograph and fingerprints, and then after confirming your status, will issue the certificate you you, thus giving you clearance from criminal indictment.
After you obtain this police clearance report which usually contains the main police character certificate and an accompanying fingerprints data page, you will need to take the document to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Abuja for authentication. For purposes of clarity, the terms authentication or attestation or legalization all loosely mean the same thing as apostille in the Nigerian context. We have previously written a detailed guide on the procedure involved for authentication of documents at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
After completing the authentication procedure at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the final step will involve taking the document to the embassy of the country where you are applying for citizenship or naturalization . The embassy will legalize the document by putting their official stamp/seal at the back of the document, thus certifying that it can be used to finalize your citizenship application.
There are different procedures for embassy legalization depending on the country in question, so it is important to check with the specific embassy of your destination country to be sure of what is required. For example, if you are processing citizenship application for Portugal and you intend to apostille or legalize your marriage certificate, the Portuguese Embassy in Nigeria requires a pre-legalization procedure they call ‘confirmation of marriage’, which is performed by their nominated consultants. You will submit the marriage certificate to the nominated consultant (a specific law firm mandated by the embassy for that purpose only), pay them processing fees of approximately N90.000, and then wait for about three weeks for them to confirm the validity of your marriage certificate. After this rather lengthy confirmation process, you will then be able to continue with the actual legalization of the marriage certificate by the Portuguese Embassy.
Similarly, if you are processing a citizenship application for Belgium in which you need to legalize your birth certificate, the Belgian Embassy as part of their legalization requirements demands that you need to perform a pre-legalization procedure known as confirmation of birth certificate, done by the National Population Commission of Nigeria (NPC) This generally takes about a week, after which the NPC will issue you a confirmation document which you will present along with your birth certificate to the Belgian Embassy. Of course all of these processes are always after the first and most important step of authenticating the document at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
These procedures relating to apostille, authentication, legalization and confirmation are understandably confusing and tiresome for any hard working expatriate in Nigeria who would rather focus on their core job or business than waste valuable time navigating through this bureaucratic nightmare. That is why Antarch Consulting exists – to take away the stress by helping you handle these processes quickly, efficiently and reliably.
If you need help or guidance for any aspect of your application – including processing your police character certificate or birth certificate and other related documents, authenticating any of these documents, and legalizing the documents at the embassy where required, do feel free to reach us via email, WhatsApp, or phone: Contact Us.
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