The United States Embassy in Nigeria has warned Nigerians to beware of fake websites and messages advertising the American visa lottery.
This was contained in a statement made available on the official Facebook page of the US Mission on Friday.
While distancing itself from the phoney sites peddling advertisements of the visa lottery, the embassy urged interested candidates to visit its official websites for accurate information on the lottery programme.
The mission further urged Nigerians to discard information from web pages without the “.gov” address.
“The U.S. Mission to Nigeria is aware of websites and messages advertising the U.S. visa lottery. All of these sites are FAKE! The only accurate information on the visa lottery is available at ng.usembassy.gov and travel.state.gov. Addresses that have a .gov are the only accurate source of visa information,” the statement read.
Peoples Gazette reported that the diversity visa lottery which commenced in 1995 was established to diversify the immigrant population in the United States, by selecting applicants mostly from countries with low rates of immigration to the United States in the previous five years.
However, a statement earlier seen on the official website of the U.S. consulate in Nigeria had banned Nigerians from participating in its diversity visa lottery.
The statement said that Nigerians were “no longer eligible for the Diversity Visa Lottery. Only people that were born outside of Nigeria or have parents that were born outside of Nigeria are eligible for the Diversity Visa. If you were born in Nigeria to Nigerian born parents, you are not eligible for the visa lottery.”
