Hi All, I am an italian cititten. My husband is a nigerian. he is living legally in germany he has a residence permit. When he got is visa, i came to nigeria briefly and we got married at the registry in lagos, in 2008.But i had to leave the following day due to family emergency (i lost my mother). Now, i want to move back to italy and he wants to apply for citizenship but i need to legalize the marriage certificate. My questions is: how can i verify if the marriage certificate he brought from nigeria in 2008 is original since i left so quickly after the marriage. I just want to be sure before i proceed with the application with him because the itlaian embassy will check. is there a way i can verify by myself before i agree to proceed with it.

Maybe you go to the Nigerian embassy if you've got one. Besides I thought they give you the wedding certificate in the court the very day you got married? I got mine right away. If you have pals here in NigeriA let thEm go verify for you.

madam, you can contact me on 08053779782.. just send the details of the wedding certificate including the names, the registry etc, or send me a scanned copy. what iwill do is conduct a search at the registry. ib.orekoya@gmail.com

thanks my bro...I have sent someone to do the verification. Highly appreciated. by the way, do you know the procedure for getting the birth cert from NPC. in lagos. and how long would it take...is it possible for a friend to get it done. and to authenticate it in abuja, do you have any clue..

thanks

hannydarl: Maybe you go to the Nigerian embassy if you've got one. Besides I thought they give you the wedding certificate in the court the very day you got married? I got mine right away. If you have pals here in NigeriA let thEm go verify for you.

@ hannydarl::thanks for your advise..i find it very useful...verification done...

@poster,

Find below, an article i have written on " use of public documents abroad.

Dear All,
I have always been asked questions about authentication and legalization of public documents. Please find below an article which you might find enlightening. You can also forward to any of your folks who have need to use documents abroad.
In order for public documents to be used in foreign countries, they need to be legalized or certified. For the purpose of legalizing documents, countries are divided into two groups: those that are signatories to the 5th October 1961 Hague Convention Abolishing the Requirement for Legalization for Foreign Public Documents (the “Convention”) and those that are not.
Apostille
Signatories to the Convention have agreed that Consular authentication of documents is no longer required and in most cases, execution of the documents by a Notary Public is sufficient. The Convention specifies the modalities through which a document issued in one of the signatory countries can be certified for legal purposes in all the other signatory states. Such a certification is called an apostille (a French word meaning certification). It is an international certification comparable to a notarization in domestic law which therefore legalizes a document for international use under the terms of the Convention. Thus, the country of an individual’s destination determines whether the authentication is an apostille or certification.
Legalization
States which have not signed the Convention must specify how foreign legal documents can be certified for use in other countries. As Nigeria is not a signatory to the 1961 Hague Convention, the individual’s documents would have to be legalized by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Nigeria and then by the Foreign Ministry of the government where the document will be used.
Process Involved in Nigeria
The process starts with the document being notarized by a Notary Public who is registered with the Foreign Affairs Ministry. The cost of this will depend on the individual Notary Public while the cost of legalizing a document at the Ministry is currently N300 per page (Please note that this is the official fee and hardly suffices to get your document out in good time). As the documents are being represented as genuine documents to be used internationally, it may be reverted to the issuing authority of the documents for verification of its authenticity. This is usually the case with certificates. For instance, a divorce certificate may be forwarded to the court which it was supposedly obtained from, to confirm whether it is a genuine document before the Ministry will proceed to legalize it. Certificates of Incorporations for companies are also usually verified at the Corporate Affairs Commission, Abuja. It is possible that the client may incur further costs during this stage. Where the documents are successfully legalized by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Nigeria, it may be necessary to subsequently have it legalized by the relevant government office or consulate of the receiving state.

Document legalization/attestation requirements can vary from embassy to embassy. Some embassies will insist on only original documents, while others will accept certified copies; some embassies will accept documents notarized by a solicitor, while others will insist on it being performed by an actual Notary Public.

Furthermore, it is important that the individual who is seeking to use the documents overseas, first of all verifies the legalization/authentication models that is being required by the specific country that the document is to be utilized in. Where this has been confirmed, he is then advised to proceed with the legalization process by either (depending on the embassy of his destination) having the original document or the Certified True Copy of same, notarized by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Nigeria’s registered Notary Public and then legalized by the same Ministry or by a consular official abroad and then by the Consular or embassy of the receiving State.

Consequently, as a result of Nigeria not being signatory to the Convention, the document must be certified twice before it can have legal effect in the receiving country.

Regards,

i1:
madam, you can contact me on 08053779782.. just send the details of the wedding certificate including the names, the registry etc, or send me a scanned copy. what iwill do is conduct a search at the registry. ib.orekoya@gmail.com

Trying to call your number to see if you can help.

Got married in 2008 but lost the marriage certificate. We had a fire incidence and we thought all certificates were safe until much later when we couldn't find it. I guess it was due to the packing afterwards and not the fire incident itself.
We however have a photocopy that we currently use but we need the original as it might be requested.

Can you help get the certified true copy? It was issued at Ikoyi Registry

Does it have a seal from the ministry of foreign affairs? if not he should go to the ministry of foreign affairs Abuja they would stamp the marriage certificate. it is called authentication of your document it costs about 600 naira (i also photocopied my marriage cert and it was also stamped ). i think your embassy also should have a way of legalizing documents. my husband is a foreigner and his embassy had a consulting firm which specializes in legalizing documents. so we paid a certain amount about 100k to the consulting firm (depending on the conditions) and the legalization was done within a week.
Hope this helps.

PLEASE I NEED SOMEONE TO GIVE ME CLUE ON WHAT TO DO,I GOT MARRIED TO MY FOREIGN PARTNER AND I NEED TO APPLY FOR VISITING VISA TO HER EMBASSY SO A FRIEND WAS TELLING ME THAT I NEED TO LEGALISED MY MARRIAGE CERTIFICATE WITH MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIR PLEASE DID ANY ONE HAVE IDEA HOW TO GO ABOUT IT.