Brown Card: Group Insists Constitution Amendment Will Review Nigerian Citizenship Eligibility 

Nume Ekeghe 

A Civil Society group, Save Nigeria Movement has said the eligibility conditions and process for granting permanent residency status or Nigerian citizenship to a foreigner can only be reviewed through constitution amendment. 

The group therefore urged the relevant institutions of state to reconsider this in the next effort at amendment to the constitution. 

The group, in a statement issued in Abuja recently and signed by the convener, Reverend Solomon Semaka, was reacting to reports that the federal government of Nigeria had introduced a Brown Card as a document that confers permanent residency status and citizenship on foreigners. 

Part of the reasons adduced by the immediate past Minister of Interior, Ogbeni Rauf Oregbesola for introducing the Brown card is to shorten the 15-year waiting period for foreigners as eligibility criterion for being granted citizenship to five years as is the case in countries like the United States of America. 

Reacting to this, Semaka said: “The Minister of interior acknowledged that only a constitution amendment could change the eligibility criteria for gaining Nigerian citizenship in speech delivered during the conferment of citizenship on foreigners on May 27. So any pronouncement to this effect that does not accommodate constitution amendment is only a wish.”  

Meanwhile, the group has also said that statement deploying a parallel programme that competes with existing ones would worsen the already fragile security situation and the safety of the nation against foreign nationals who come into the country with ulterior motives that undermine the country’s security system. 

“Introducing the brown card is tantamount to introducing a parallel platform for escapee defaulters in the payment for existing programmes.

“Our investigations have shown that unscrupulous agents have already started calling expatriates in their data base to pay as much USD 5,000 with the promise that they could grant them residency and citizenship application waivers in the guise of Brown Card, even when the process to its introduction is still a long way to go.

“This is the sign of things to come if you open multiple channels of granting permanent residency status to foreigners in Nigeria,” Semaka stated.