Nigeria will require civil servants to show proof of vaccination against Covid-19 or a negative test for the disease to gain access to their offices from the beginning of December, a presidential committee said on Wednesday.

The presidential committee said unvaccinated government workers will need to present a negative test result done within 72-hours before they are granted access to their offices across the country and its embassies abroad.

"An appropriate service wide advisory/circular will be issued to guide the process," Boss Mustapha, chairperson of the presidential steering committee on Covid-19, said in a statement.

Nigeria has administered some five million vaccine doses to its 200-million citizens, and is in the midst of deploying millions more doses of Moderna and AstraZeneca shots received through the COVAX vaccine scheme for developing countries.

It also has 1.12-million doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine that it purchased through an African Union programme and is scheduled to receive 7.7-million doses of the Sinopharm vaccine via COVAX.

Nigeria, which has not tested widely for Covid-19, has so far recorded 208 153 confirmed infections and 2 756 deaths from the virus.

In May, Nigeria banned travellers coming from some countries where Covid-19 was spreading rapidly.

The presidential committee said it had decided to remove South Africa, Turkey and Brazil from its restricted travel list following a review of developments in those countries.