he United States of America swore in 47,819 Nigerians as naturalised citizens from 2019 to 2023, an updated U.S. Naturalisations Annual Flow Report by the Department of Homeland Security shows. The report, updated in August 2025 and compiled by the Office of Homeland Security Statistics, draws its figures from Form N-400, the application every would-be American citizen submits. The data is also drawn from the electronic case files used by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to track each application from fingerprinting to the oath ceremony. According to data obtained by The PUNCH, 8,930 Nigerians were naturalised from October 2019 to September 2020, a year marked by COVID-19 shutdowns that paused oath ceremonies for 11 weeks, March 18, 2020, to June 4, 2020. The following year, 10,921 Nigerians obtained citizenship as USCIS cleared its pandemic backlog.