Nigerian Visa: A camel through the needle’s eye? …… NATION

Like most governments before him, President Muhammadu Buhari, in his sayings and deeds, has left no one in doubt of his desire to attract foreign investments into Nigeria. At every opportunity, the President wasted no time in telling foreigners they are welcome to Nigeria for business and tourism. And during his many trips, some of which were officially announced as efforts to lure investors to the country, Buhari utilized all avenues to meet and discuss with the business communities.
But is spite of the relentless efforts of government of Nigeria to lure foreigners with good intentions to the country, applicants still besiege Nigerian embassies across the world for visa only to be delayed unnecessarily or even denied outrightly. From many countries, tales abound of how visitors and Nigerians alike are being made to go through harrowing experiences before they could be granted entry visas.

Dr. Boye Tijani is a Nigerian University don based in the United Kingdom. He residers in Limavady, a market town in County Londonderry, Northern Ireland, and has been an executive committee member of the Nigerian community in the Irish county for many years.
Recently, he led a delegation of Nigerians from Londonderry back home on a mission to attract attention to the difficulties being encountered in the processes for the acquisition of the Nigerian passport and visa by foreigners and citizens alike. The delegation was in Abuja to see authorities at the Interior ministry. An attempt was also made to visit the presidency.
“Ironically, this is a country that daily tells the world it is willing to open its doors for foreign trades and investments. The happenings in the embassies abroad is in contrast to the propaganda back home. No country that is placing as much emphasis on foreign investment as the Nigerian politician say they do, will make its entry visa process as difficult and complicated as that of Nigeria.
This explains why I keep saying we are paying lip service to foreign investment drive. From the government of Obasanjo to that of Jonathan and now Buhari, so much has been spent on trips aimed at courting foreign investors and traders. Even State governors go abroad to woo investors.
But when these foreigners are ready to come to Nigeria and check out what we have in stock, they are faced with an immediate discouragement. They find the process of getting visa as harrowing as a camel passing through the eye of a needle. And in most cases, they are not impressed enough to think about doing business in Nigeria,” Tijani lamented.
The bewildered don recalled that it would not be the first time an alarm would be raised over the plight of those seeking Nigerian visa. But sadly, he says it appears the governments either uninterested in addressing the problem or is simply incapable of doing so.
“Again, we have come and we were unable to achieve much. The authorities displaced flagrant lack of political will to take urgent step. The minister could not be met and discussed with as he was unavailable and we were without prior appointment. The officials we met could say much because of civil service rules.
The presidency, the way they made it appear, was a no go area and the national assembly was too busy to attend to us. At the end of the day, like it had happened many times in the past, we had to drop our petition and go back to our base, to continue the unending wait for help. This is not encouraging. It is not encouraging in any way,” he said.
Recalling an earlier attempt to seek help by frustrated Nigerians stranded in the United States due to their inability to get visas to travel back home to Nigeria, Tijani said while he was a doctoral student in America, many young Nigerians who had travelled to the U.S for studies found it nearly impossible to return back home after their studies.
“I recall a particular incident when it took the intervention of a Senate Committee and a Special Adviser to the President, to get visa for two Nigerian students who had to come home to get some document they needed to complete their graduate verifications. The interventions came after four years of their trying to get visa.
One of them already lost a scholarship for higher studies given him by an American charity organization for doing well in graduate school. The other, a lady, was unable to attend the burial ceremony of her father as she was unable to get visa. But because the Nigerian student community made noise back then, they got visas and travelled home. But hundreds others in their shoes were not that lucky and they are still there waiting for help to come.
Gory tales from yonder
Last month, Steve Derin-Coker and his wife Ngozi Derin-Coker, celebrated their first wedding anniversary. For other couples, that might mean a nice meal at a favourite restaurant or perhaps an evening at the theatre. But for the Derin-Cokers, the occasion was spent like every other night of the last one year: thousands of miles apart, talking over Skype and pinging though blackberry.
They are one of the many couples being kept apart by the lingering visa application problems being encountered by travelers to Nigeria. Steve, a Nigerian based in Calabasas, Los Angeles. Like every young Nigerian man seeking the golden fleece, he had left Nigeria four years ago to study in America.
Two years ago, he visited Nigeria and met Ngozi, a staff of one of the new generation banks in Lagos. They struck the right cords and a romance ensued between them. Steve returned to his base in Los Angeles and Ngozi visited soon after. That was when they decided to become husband and wife.
All said and done, a date was agreed upon for the ceremony and Steve proceeded to apply for an entry visa into the country five months before the date. He was so optimistic that he would be granted one long before the day he planned to travel. Specifically, he had hoped to arrive Nigeria a month before his wedding to Ngozi.
But the hope soon turned to a nightmare for the young man, when, three months after he sent in his visa application at the High Commisson in New York, he was yet to receive any correspondence from them. Worried, he intensified efforts and at a point, he was told the process has been outsourced to an online agency.
“I became more confused because I was given the link of what to do online. But hard as I tried, the page kept telling me the information I was seeking were yet to be uploaded. Several expensive trips back to the High Commission confirmed my worst fear that I may miss my wedding in Nigeria.
The craziest thing in it all was that nobody could really tell me what was delaying the process. It was as if the people working there lacked the understanding of what they were supposed to say or do. I was left not knowing what to do too. In the midst of it all, my passport expired.
I knew it was to expire soon and I was hoping to renew it in Nigeria. That was one of the reasons I wanted to travel early. But the expiration of the passport truncated my travel plans as I was told I may have to wait months to renew it in the United States. In fact, a year after, I am still unable to renew my passport not to talk of getting a visa to travel.
On my wedding day, I was holed up in my room here in Calabasas, while my wife was given to my relatives with a giant portrait of me overlooking the whole ceremony. I felt betrayed by my country. I felt let down by my people. It was and still a sad experience. We couldn’t change the date again because it was too late as all arrangements were in place except my arrival,’ he recalled.
And from Jamaica came a pathetic and shameful story of how Nigeria, through its defective visa/passport application process, encouraged brain drain and lost one of its finest scholars to the Jamaican system following the inability of promising Eromonsele Akhidenor, then a student in the country, to get the necessary documentations that will enable him return home at the end of his studies in the Caribean country.
Eremonsele, who fought had to return to Nigeria, was frustrated by the Nigeiran Embassies in Kingston, Jamaica and in New York, America for more nearly three years as he struggled to get an entry visa into his country of birth. While he though all he would bhave to struggle for was a Nigeiran visa, the young graduate was shocked to discover that renewing his Nigerian passport would add to his nightmare for years.
At the height of his frustration, he got in touch with an Editor of a leading national daily in Nigeria and desperately sought his help “to speak out on our behalf as I have observed that we might wait endlessly here and no one will ever rescue us.” According to him, aside himself, hundreds of other Nigerians were stranded out there in the same circumstances.
Read his story here: “ I left Nigeria in 2010 in a bid to obtain a graduate(Masters and PHD )degrees to further enhance my capability to be useful to my community and my country I chose the Caribbean because of a personal choice I made.
“ I have completed my Master’s Program in Integrated Urban and Rural Environmental Management under Natural Resource Management Streams with good grades (My school can be contacted to verify my academic grades as I emerged as one of the best students).
At this point, I am stranded in Jamaica and have turned a destitute due to the non-renewal of the present e-passport at the Nigeria High Commission Kingston Jamaica.
“My problem started by the Month of May 2013 when my Nigerian passport was about to expire,4 months before its expiration date I proceeded to the Nigeria High commission here in Kingston Jamaica to get it renewed only to be told that I cannot renew my passport at the High Commission in Jamaica.
I was told that I will have to go back to Nigeria to renew the said passport, because they do not have the new machine and personnel to do so here in Jamaica. That was the first surprise of my life.
“At another occasion I went back to explain my position to the Embassy officials about my inability to travel back to Nigeria, because this was at the heart of my final Master’s research project which was sponsored by the Environmental Foundation of Jamaica and this was a topic where I looked at Hazard Mapping and Risk Assessment in five communities within the buffer zone of one of Jamaica’s renowned protected area, the Blue and John Crow Mountains National Park.
This was a rare opportunity granted a foreigner and I did not intend to let it pass by me. It was then that the Administrative Attache one Mr Rufus Adeniyi gave me two options.
“ He told me, I could go to the Nigerian High Commission in New York or alternatively, I should write down my name and wait for the Nigerian Immigration Officials from the United States. He stated that, they usually come to the embassy to renew passports once in a year. In order to be on the safe side I took both options. I then immediately contacted the United States of America Embassy here in Kingston.
The Embassy of the United States of America told me that there is a six month validity period rules which must be adhered to by citizens of some selected countries which included Nigeria and that automatically disqualified me to travel to the United States hence I chose the second option.
“I went back to the embassy I was given a notebook to write down my name and my phone number. I did not only put down my phone number I also included my wife’s phone number just to be sure they are able to contact me. I waited and kept in constant contact with the embassy only to be told on the 31st of October when I contacted the High Commission, that the Nigerian Immigration officials came and they stayed for two days and that since it was a short notice the embassy could not contact every one of us.
“The Nigerian community in the Caribbean are professionals and law abiding citizens whose life and destiny should not be toiled with by the inefficient way our officials especially those from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Nigerian Immigration Service handle their assigned duty.”
Unable to get his passport renewed, it became impossible for Eremonsele to apply for an entry visa into Nigeria. And for over two years, he roamed the streets of Kingston like a destitute, having finished his study and unable to get anything else doing, yet stranded and unable to return to his country home.
Tired of waiting for help, Eremonsele kept making efforts to get the attention of the authorities back home in Nigeira as the embassy officials instead nothing could be done to help him. His story was at that time, pushed out by the Editor he contacted through the national daily the latter work for.
Worried and wearied by the endless wait, Eremonsele again wrote; “Dear Sir, greetings to you in the precious name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ from whom all blessings flow.Sir,I have not heard from you in a long time .I am sorry for always bothering you but I am confident that you are the only one who can push this message across on our behalf because it appears that the Nigerian State is not interested in the welfare of its citizens.
Its another year ending again and I have been on a particular issue of trying to get my expired passport renewed .Made worse for us is the Ebola stigmatization for citizens from the West African region.Sir i am appealing to you to please help.I was at the Nigeria High Commission just yesterday and what I was told is that nobody can help us as the situation is above their control I felt very bad about this hence I decided to write to you.”
His helper back home wrote another story calling attention to the young man’s plight. He made contacts to see how Eremonsele could be helped. He even went an extra mile by praying hard for a miracle to happen and save the stranded Nigerian from further suffering. Still, the situation persisted, until help came for Eremonsele, but not through anything Nigerian.
“I am writing to inform you that by divine miracle I got my status back but not through the Nigeria system but through the Jamaica Authority. I formally applied to their government through my school based on my top performance in my Master’s degree and because of my specialty in Geographic Information System.
They decided to issue to me a Jamaican passport and also gave me a job as a physical planner in one of their leading environmental agency my prime duties are to help draft policies and development order for the entire Jamaica reporting directly to the office of the Prime Minister. I must let you know that this is the hand of God in action.
I would want you to continue the fight for Nigerians in Diaspora. If I had not gone to school I still wonder what would have become of me. There are lots of Nigerians here who are left stranded. I thank you for your support during my period of distress. May God bless you. I will try and come to Nigeria this year during my vacation and I would like to see you face to face. Once again I say thank you.”
The above was Eremonsele’s final correspondence to the Editor helping him back home. And with that stroke of communication, he announced the loss of another brilliant brain by Nigeria to another country as a result of carelessness.
“When I got that last letter, I felt bad. I was left wondering why we just couldn’t take good care of our own. I was left wondering why we must always allow our best brains to feel rejected and unappreciated. But he was happy his worries were over and I rejoiced with him,” Lekan Otufodunrin, Editor at The Nation Newspapers, said of Eremonsele’s story.
Otunfodurin, while speaking on Eremonsele’s travails, also spoke of how two foreign journalists from Kenya and South Africa, struggled without success to attend President Muhammadu Buhari’s inauguration last year without success. The widely travelled Editor expressed sadness over the growing notoriety of Nigeria as regard’s difficulties in getting entrance visa by visitors.
“These two colleagues of ours did all they could to get visa to be part of the inauguration ceremony. Some of us here also intervened and helped them to see how they can be here for the inauguration. But it may shock you to know that after being tossed up and down between the ministry of In formation, the Interior ministry, the High Commissions and the likes, these foreigners were denied entry visa.
Sadly, no genuine reason was adduced for this refusal. The official position remains that the process was yet to be completed. One wonders if they were not aware of the fact that the request was time bound. The inauguration came and went, yet the visa application by these journalists remained pending,” he recalled.
Otufodunrin also shared the sad experience of some foreigners who were billed to be in Nigeria next week for an international media exchange program. He recalled how the program, a week long fellowship that would have seen the country’s economy benefitting, was moved to Rwanda because participants could get visa to come visiting.
“You must have heard of the Blomberg media fellowship that ought to hold in Nigeria soon. May I inform you that it has been moved to Rwanda? Yes, we are now to go to Rwanda because some of the participants could get visa to come and participate. It is more painful because it is an exchange program that has seen us visiting Kenya and South Africa. The last leg is the visit to Nigeria and we were looking forward to hosting them here.
But the South African participants could not secure Nigerian visa. It isn so sad because when we were to go to South Africa, it was just within days that I got mine. Going to Kenya was also easy for those of us participating from Nigeria. One is left to wonder why coming to Nigeria must always be a problem,” he said.
Similarly, in February 2013, the Nigerian High Commission in London allegedly denied Andrew Harvey, husband of late music star, Goldie Harvey, a visa into the country. Goldie’s husband was then being expected to arrive Nigeria to finalize his late wife’s burial plans with her family members.
Although Andrew managed to make it to his wife’s burial after a lot of hues and cries from astonished Nigerians, reports had it that he had to apply for the Visa in another country aside the United Kingdom. Sources also said he got the Visa largely through the last minute intervention of the federal government following embarrassing comments across the world about the matter.
Also, in the same year, Olubowale Victor Akintimehin, a United States based rapper of Nigerian descent, popularly known as Wale was denied visa to Nigeria.Wale who was billed to perform at Ice Prince Zamani’s album launch at Eko hotel and suites in Lagos that week, was born in the States and this would have been his first visit to his native country Nigeria.
It was a downcast Wale, who is originally from Ondo State, but never had a Nigerian passport, that released a statement via his record label Maybach Music saying that he was not able to make the trip due to logistic problems in getting an entry visa. He expressed his sadness over the development.
According to him, given his enthusiasm about coming to his home country, he set about getting the visa early enough. He said it was very difficult getting a Nigerian passport. It was for this reason his effort to be given an entry visa became problematic. The rapper urged the Nigerian authority to take steps that will make coming to Nigeria a lot better than it was then.
2015
His story is not much different from that of South African foremost rapper, AKA, who had to call off a mini tour to Nigeria and Ghana last year after he was unable to get Visa. Billed to performed at an Industry Nite event in Lagos, Nigeria back then, the rapper had wanted to use the opportunity to tour the country and neighboring Ghana.
Disappointed, AKA announced on his social media page saying “We’ve had to postpone my trip to Nigeria and Ghana due to delays with my visa. Not a few Nigerians were shocked a the development with promoters of the tour lamenting the loss of millions in endorsement and branding.

An unending debate
According to an editorial recently published by the widely acclaimed travel site, wanderlust.co.uk, geting a Nigeria visa is stressful.
“The Nigerian embassy in London is one of the most frustrating places ever. With less chances of being issued a visa after months of applying, you will be so frustrated at the end of the day due to the ineptitude and I don’t care attitudes and the extra charges imposed by officials,” the travel site said.
A Nigerian visa has been included in a list of ten of the world’s hardest to get visas according to a recent article published in travel site, wanderlust.co.uk. According to the publication, getting a Nigerian visa requires a lot of paperwork. The other nine countries on the list are, China, Iran, Russia, India, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Chad, Sudan and Thailand.
“In addition to your hotel booking confirmation, you’ll need to provide bank statements and a letter of employment. You’ll also have to make three separate payments: the first to the Nigerian government (which is done online when you fill out your application form); the second to the Nigerian High Commission (which can be done only at the post office as a postal order); and the third to the visa application centre when your application is submitted.”
In 2014, the Nigerian high commission in New Delhi announced it was unable to print visas, passports and other travel documents because of technical problems with the system used to process applications.
About 450 people in India , mostly visa applicants, were affected by the problem which is impacting on all categories of visa applications.
The mission contacted everyone whose visa were delayed to offer explanation after serious outcries and protests over the matter. The database outage resulted in an extensive backlog, which hindered the Nigerian Embassy’s efforts to return to normal operations.
“The problems began since last week , when a database used for processing visa and passport applications crashed. The mission need security approval through this database before it can print passports, visas and reports of births abroad. It is a Nigerian immigration Department database, and the outage has affected embassies worldwide,” an official of the mission said.
Otufodunrin wonders if the sad experiences of travelers to Nigeria is a carry over from certain restrictions allegedly imposed buy the last administration and or bureaucratic bottlenecks needing urgent attentions.
“Given the experiences of foreigners trying to visit that I know of, I am left wondering if the restrictions we heard were imposed by the last administration in its bid to allegedly hide some of its activities from the outside world, may be responsible for the hassle people go through before they can come to Nigeira legally,” he said.
According to an editorial recently published by the widely acclaimed travel site, wanderlust.co.uk, geting a Nigeria visa is stressful.
“The Nigerian embassy in London is one of the most frustrating places ever. With less chances of being issued a visa after months of applying, you will be so frustrated at the end of the day due to the ineptitude and I don’t care attitudes and the extra charges imposed by officials,” the travel site said.
A Nigerian visa has been included in a list of ten of the world’s hardest to get visas according to a recent article published in travel site, wanderlust.co.uk. According to the publication, getting a Nigerian visa requires a lot of paperwork. The other nine countries on the list are, China, Iran, Russia, India, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Chad, Sudan and Thailand.
“In addition to your hotel booking confirmation, you’ll need to provide bank statements and a letter of employment. You’ll also have to make three separate payments: the first to the Nigerian government (which is done online when you fill out your application form); the second to the Nigerian High Commission (which can be done only at the post office as a postal order); and the third to the visa application centre when your application is submitted.”
First, the exercise is extremely time-consuming in a country where time matters most. The reason offered for this failure is that each consulate office in the USA is equipped with only two Immigration bio-data capturing machines. To that end, a consulate can only afford to lend one machine for interventions, and understandably so, since the other machine must remain at the consulate for its normal operations. Second, the consulate does not seem to have the desired number of staff to contain the type of volume usually generated from the passport interventions.
A good case in point is a recent passport intervention conducted from February 19 through 22, 2016 in Houston by the Nigerian Consulate in Atlanta. Over 1,000 Nigerians applied and showed up at the venue. Although the consulate staff had to work over 15 hours per day, only less than 400 of the applications were captured by the lone machine. The majority had to go home dispirited, wondering why simple things are made difficult once associated with their native country. And you cannot fault the frustrations. In the attempt to obtain ordinary passports, these fellow Nigerians had to take off from work to queue in line for days only to end up empty-handed. Even when the passports are finally processed, it takes anywhere from four to eight weeks before they are received by the applicants.
The most mind-boggling is that Nigeria does not have a permanent consular post in the Texas/Oklahoma region. For those unfamiliar with the American geography, the area under review is similar in size to the entire Nigeria and features big cities, such as Dallas, San Antonio, Austin, and Oklahoma City. More notably, the area includes Houston, a city recognised by the US State Department as boasting the largest concentration of Nigerians in America. Moreover, Houston is the energy capital of the world, with a hive of Oil and Gas businesses tailor-made for Nigerian investment.
Buhari’s vision on foreign investment requires a holistic approach—targeting foreigners as well as Nigerians in the Diaspora. It does not require a clairvoyant to discern that these Diaspora-based Nigerians, who have been remitting home an average of $21 billion per year, actually hold the key to foreign investment into our country. To start with, they are highly vested in the different nations and serve as unsung ambassadors in their respective fields. Furthermore, most of them are nearing the retirement age and are pondering whether to invest at home or abroad. Best of all, their foreign-born children, most of who are also highly placed in different societies, are naturally eager to explore opportunities in the African country. Yet, while their parents might have been used to the “Nigerian factor”, the younger generation expects better,” he said.
While efforts to get the view of Ekpedeme Kings, spokesperson of the Nigerian Immigration Services proved abortive as calls to his line were not answered, an official of the NIS who craved anonymity put the problem with the visa process down to the sorry states of many of Nigeria’s foreign missions.
“Forget the beautiful building and attractive lawns, if you take your time to visit and study some of these embassies and high commissions, you will understand why the delays. Aside from being under-staffed in most cases, the necessary equipments and logistics are usually not available.
Some of our foreign missions are like abandoned babies. Especially in some of these less known countries, government do nothing other than post Ambassadors. Very little is done by the Interior ministry to help the situation. People from some Carribean country cannot get visa until they go to New York.
This is because the manpower and equipments to get the application through are absent. There are also some unnecessary practices that the Interior ministry is still clinging on to. This is an age where things are expected to be done with the speed of lightening. But some funny paperworks still slow down our processes,” he said.

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