Before you start

CERPAC or evidence of lawful residence
Passport
Proof of an FCT address — tenancy agreement or utility bill
A Nigerian phone number
References from existing account holders, at some banks

Step-by-step

1
Enrol for a BVN at any branch
Biometric enrolment done once, in person, and recognised by every Nigerian bank thereafter. Make it the first banking errand — nothing else proceeds without it.
In personWho: YouWeek 1
2
Open naira and domiciliary accounts in the same visit
The domiciliary account holds USD, GBP or EUR and is how hard-currency salary or transfers from abroad arrive. Adding one later means repeating the KYC exercise.
In personWho: YouWeek 1–2
3
Bring the address proof the branch will accept
Nigerian KYC is documentary and branch officers are conservative. A tenancy agreement plus a recent utility bill, with a landlord's letter where the bill is not in your name, is the usual working combination. Ask the branch first.
In personWho: You
4
Register with FCT-IRS for personal income tax
Personal income tax follows residence, and the Federal Capital Territory has its own revenue service. Register early — the FCT-IRS tax clearance certificate is requested by landlords, schools and permit renewals more often than you expect.
OnlineWho: You
5
Set up instant transfers and check your limits
Domestic transfers through NIP are instant and cheap and work extremely well. International card spending and foreign-currency limits on naira cards move with CBN policy, so ask the bank what your current limits are.
Mobile appWho: You
6
Get a Certificate of Capital Importation for business capital
If you are bringing money in to invest, the receiving bank issues a CCI evidencing that the capital entered through official channels. It is what makes dividends and eventual repatriation possible.
In personWho: You

Documents you’ll need

Passport and CERPAC
BVN
Proof of FCT address
Passport photographs
Employer's letter, often requested
Reference forms from existing account holders, at some banks

Things most newcomers don’t know

The BVN belongs to you, not to a bank, and that makes the second account trivial.

Nigeria's Bank Verification Number is a biometric identity registered once and honoured across every bank in the country. It links your accounts, drives fraud controls, and means opening an additional account elsewhere is quick. It also means nobody can open an account in your name. Enrolling in week one removes friction from everything downstream, and it is a single short branch visit.

Source: Central Bank of Nigeria; community-reported

Advice describing an official rate and a big parallel premium describes a system that ended in 2023.

Before June 2023 Nigeria ran a pegged official rate with a wide parallel gap, and an entire folk practice grew up around it. Since the float and the collapse of the segmented windows into a single willing-buyer, willing-seller market, that gap is not the structural feature it was. Acting on the old model now mostly means taking avoidable risk. Budget in naira, state mechanisms rather than rates, and treat any dollar figure you read as a snapshot.

Source: Central Bank of Nigeria

Abuja's tax authority is neither a state one nor FIRS, and this genuinely confuses people.

The Federal Capital Territory is not a state, so it has no state internal revenue service — but personal income tax is still sub-national, collected by the FCT Internal Revenue Service. FIRS handles companies and VAT, not your PAYE. People arriving from Lagos keep filing with LIRS, and people who reason that a federal capital must file federally go to FIRS. Both are wrong, and both discover it when a tax clearance certificate is needed.

Source: FCT Internal Revenue Service

A Certificate of Capital Importation is the only thing that makes inbound investment repatriable.

The CCI is issued by the Nigerian bank that receives your inbound capital and evidences that the money came in through official channels. Without it, dividends, sale proceeds and the capital itself are effectively stranded for repatriation purposes, and no amount of subsequent paperwork reconstructs it. Ask for the CCI at the moment of the transfer, not afterwards.

Source: Central Bank of Nigeria

Common mistakes to avoid

Trying to open an account before enrolling for a BVN.
Arriving without address documentation the branch recognises.
Opening only a naira account and needing a domiciliary one later.
Filing personal income tax with FIRS or with LIRS instead of FCT-IRS.
Bringing business capital in without obtaining a Certificate of Capital Importation.

Some of this may be out of date. Spotted something inaccurate? Help us keep it right for the next newcomer.