Authentication of Results and Academic Certificates
The key steps to authenticate documents in Nigeria at the Federal Ministry of Foreign Affairs may be summarized as follows:
- Get a Notary Public to notarize the document – if required by the embassy or destination country (e.g. Chinese Embassy and Qatar Embassy), otherwise you may skip this step.
- Take the document to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs headquarters in Abuja and fill the authentication forms at the Legal Services Division (LSD) of the Ministry.
- Obtain the applicable official document authentication fees for the document(s) you wish to attest, which is priced per page and then head to any major commercial bank to make a REMITA payment to the designated government account (provided by the assigned officer of the Legal Services Department).
- After making payment, return to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Legal Services Department to deposit the proof of payment (bank deposit tellers) and obtain an acknowledgement receipt issued by the ministry.
- After making payment, return to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Legal Services Department to deposit the proof of payment (bank deposit tellers) and obtain an acknowledgement receipt issued by the ministry.
- Submit the document for authentication at the appropriate desk of the LSD at the ministry, after which you would be told when to check back for the authenticated document.
There is no guarantee that the document authentication process would be completed at the recommended date, so you need to be patient and possibly endure repeated visits to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to ascertain the status of the authentication process. The time frame for authentication of documents in Nigeria may depend on the kind of document or certificate in question, as different documents may require different follow up actions on the part of the ministry, prior to final authentication.
Accordingly, it is important to shed more light on the requirements for attestation of documents commonly handled by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Nigeria.
Divi University
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