Changing your name in Nigeria is not one step but a chain of them, because every record you hold - your NIN, your bank’s BVN, your passport, your certificates - has to be changed separately, and each office wants to see the change proved. Getting the order right saves weeks.
Warning
How a change of name is proved in Nigeria is in flux. What most offices still ask for and what the Supreme Court has said are not the same thing. Read the section on the law before you start, and if the change will reach a passport, a land title or a foreign visa, take a lawyer’s advice.
After marriage, you do not have to
Nothing in Nigerian law requires anyone to take a spouse’s name. Many women in Lagos do, many add it to their own, and many keep their name entirely. Each is lawful. What matters is that every record agrees with every other.
What offices ask for
The practice almost every office has followed for decades:
- Swear an affidavit of change of name, stating your old name, your new name and the reason. In Lagos this is now done online - see swearing an affidavit.
- Publish the change in a national newspaper, in the classified notices. Keep the full page, not a cutting.
- For a change after marriage, bring the marriage certificate as well. After a divorce, bring the decree.
- Publish in the Official Gazette where an office asks for it. Some do for passports, immigration and other official purposes.
What the Supreme Court said
In PDP v Degi-Eremienyo, the Bayelsa governorship case, the Supreme Court said that an affidavit and a newspaper notice do not change the name on an official certificate. Its position, as reported, is that a change of name on official records needs a deed poll, the approval of the authority that issued the record, and publication in the Official Gazette.
The NPC has said it will move change of name onto a deed-poll process that ends with a change-of-name certificate. When this guide was written, the new process had not been launched.
What that means for you: the affidavit and newspaper notice are still what most offices ask for. But they are the weaker proof, and a name change that will be tested later - in an election, in a land dispute, at a foreign immigration office - is safer done by deed poll and gazette from the start. Check whether the NPC process has begun before you choose.
The order to update things in
- Your NIN. Other agencies verify against it, so a mismatch here blocks everything after. NIMC charges for each modification, so make one change, correctly. See your NIN.
- Your bank and BVN. Your bank updates the BVN record; each bank you use then needs the new name.
- Your passport. A change of name means a new passport application with the supporting documents. See the Nigerian passport.
- Your driver’s licence, at the next renewal or sooner.
- Your employer, pension fund administrator and tax record, so that your pension contributions and tax are credited to the right person.
- Your certificates, if you need them to match. Most institutions will not reissue a certificate; they keep it in the old name and you prove the link with the change-of-name documents.
Keep several certified copies of every document in the chain. You will be asked for them for years.