The infamy of the Nigerian passport

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I like to travel. Especially to places Nigerians don’t tend to go. I meet interesting people. Two years ago near Chichen Itza, Mexico, my wife and I met an elderly and sweet Argentine couple, Flavia and Rodolfo. Flavia adored my wife’s smooth and taut skin. We became chummy. They’ve been on our case to visit them in Mendoza, Argentina. No need to worry about a hotel. They’ve got an empty nest.

Given that what attracted Flavia to us was my wife’s skin, I haven’t taken up their offer to visit. Maybe they like to eat black people with their wine. My mother didn’t raise me to end up as tasty Asado in Mendoza.

Still on the same peregrination, this time on a cigar farm in Viñales, Cuba, we also met two genial Americans. The guy was a Dominican-American and his girlfriend Cuban American. Funny duo. Amidst the smoke of his Cohiba and the encouragement of farm-distilled rum, the boyfriend proclaimed cigars from the Dominican Republic were better than Cuban cigars. The farmer indulged the blasphemy. He needed tourist dollars. Which tends to happen only when tourists are alive.

Four years earlier on a solo jaunt through Europe, I’d also met a Croat in Munich. He was a hobbyist photographer like me. He invited me to Croatia. He boasted I’d never go anywhere else If I came to Dubrovnik with him.

And oh, there was this young Taiwanese bloke in Kraków who invited me to hate China. We ate Pierogi together and I hated China.

Yeah, you meet interesting people on your travels.

But travelling with a Nigerian passport is a different matter altogether. It is only for the meek, forbearing and self-abased. You surrender some dignity when you carry that passport.

I only have a Nigerian passport. While I love my country, I wish I had another passport. If only to travel hassle-free. But my ancestors didn’t have the foresight to be captured by slave traders. Posterity will judge them. I could have been Dave Chappelle or Tyler Perry.

The Henley Global Passport Index compares the visa-free access of 199 passports to 227 travel destinations. It ranks the Nigerian passport at 92 out of 103. Afghanistan brings up the rear at 103.

The Nigerian passport is visa-free or Visa On Arrival (VOA) to 45 countries. 25 of those countries are in Africa.

Did you know that the passport of St. Kitts and Nevis is ranked 23rd in the world and is visa-free to 157 destinations? It is a country of 48,000 people. The highest-ranked African passport is Mauritius’ at 28 and is visa-free to 150 destinations.

You hear that, ancestors?

Visa-free travel to 45 countries means there are 182 destinations I need a visa to visit. Preparing visa applications is onerous. And the fees add up.

The UK is one of my favourite countries. Just because I like fish and chips and bad weather. However, the UK has the most expensive visa regime in the world for Nigerians. A 2-year UK Visitor visa is N926,000 ($581). A 5-year visa is N1,647,240 ($1,036). Consider the visa fees for a family of four.

These UK visa fees are in stark contrast to a US 5-year B1/B2 visa at N284,900 ($185). A possible 10-year visitor visa for Canada costs N120,000 (100 CAD). A Schengen visa is N152,000 ( €90). Japan’s 3-month visa fee is ridiculous. It is N12,500. And you don’t pay unless the visa is issued. I will be swapping Jacket potatoes for sashimi.

But it gets more ireful. The UK requires us to pay the visa fees in dollars. Most countries with a diplomatic presence in Nigeria accept Naira. The Schengen countries, Japan, China, the UAE and many other countries all accept Naira. Even America, the landlord of the dollar, accepts its fees in Naira. But not the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Yet Nigeria is a member of the Commonwealth and has strong ties with Blighty.

Blighty. That is an endearment term for “Great Britain.”

I digress.

To be fair, the plummeting value of the Naira makes the cost of foreign visas prohibitive. The change in visa fees over the last five years has not been geometric. It is the Naira that has tanked. At any rate, Nigeria practises the reciprocity rule. Nigerian visas are just as expensive for UK citizens visiting Nigeria ($944 for a 2-year visa!) But the UK started it. Then Nigeria retaliated. I suppose when the Home Office looks at Nigeria, its irises change to the pound sign.

Last week, a development in Namibia gladdened my heart. From April 2025, citizens of the US, UK, Canada, Germany and 29 other countries will need visas to enter Namibia. Before now, they did not require a visa to visit Namibia but Namibians needed visas to visit theirs. Well, not anymore.

Hear Namibia’s Ministry of Immigration :

“Namibia has extended gestures of goodwill and favourable treatment to nationals of various countries. However, despite these efforts, certain nations have not reciprocated. In light of this disparity, the government has deemed it necessary to implement a visa requirement to ensure parity and fairness in diplomatic interactions.”

That is some cojones. Thank you, Namibia.

But by far the most painful experience of having a Nigerian passport is the disrespect we often face in the process of or when travelling. I have heard tales of woe. Turkiye, Seychelles, the UAE, Malaysia.

If you want to see Nigerians at their humblest, visit an embassy.

A few years ago, I’d gone to the embassy of a Schengen country. Two consular officers interviewed me, a black lady and a white guy. I stood in front of them while they chatted. After a few minutes, they remembered I was waiting for them. They found it in their heart to attend to me. Disinterested, the fella asked for my passport and documents. He asked me why I wanted to visit the country.

To tell your mother she did a poor job raising you!

I didn’t tell him that. But that was how I felt.

I told him the visit was for pleasure. I hadn’t been to that Schengen country and it would be nice to visit.

The lady asked which prior Schengen countries I’d been to. I told her. She then asked why I left my last job for the current one.

Really? That’s none of your beeswax! Do you also want to know if I slept with my wife yesterday? Because I’d be happy to show you the marks on my back.

I told her that was private information and didn’t see the relevance of it to my application.

She got angry and demanded, “Sir, you have to answer the question!”

A red mist suffused over my eyes. I contemplated asking her to return my passport and to tell her to stuff the visa. I thought about it. Should I or should I not?

I decided not to. For I remembered a Yoruba pearl of wisdom: e jé ká pe màálu ní bòdá kó lè jé ka rí ònà kojá.

It translates as “Let us call an obstructing bull ‘brother’ so it can allow us to pass through.”

So I told her I left my last job for a better opportunity.

She didn’t probe further. But I was seething.

They issued the visa nine days later. For seven days.

Both of una no go eat potato!

I didn’t bother to use the visa. I changed my itinerary and applied for another Schengen visa through a different country. I got issued a lengthier visa. Sane people.

Several years earlier, a country in Oceania had asked me to prove I was not an intending immigrant.

Intending immigrant? To your country? Me? You people have more sheep than you have people! What am I going to do in your country, sell lamb chops?

I wrote to them that I had no interest in eloping in their country. I hadn’t eloped in more prosperous countries as my passport will attest. I’m doing rather OK in Nigeria, thank you.

They issued the visa. I travelled to the country. It took me almost two days to get there. And it took me another seven days to see the first black person. He was a Ghanaian student. We nearly hugged.

My friends with foreign passports don’t get asked questions at the point of entry. But not me. They put me through Shark Tank.

In Havana, the immigration guys pulled my wife and I aside. They scrutinised our passports and regarded us with suspicion. So many visas on our passports. So many stamps. Mr and Mrs Smith. Everybody on our flight had left the terminal. The missus was pissed. Me, I was chuffed. I am being interrogated in a Communist country! Next on my travel list; to be thrown in a gulag.

As an aside, isn’t it ironic that when you return home, the queue for foreigners at MMA is always shorter than the queue for us citizens? It is the inverse abroad. Presumably, there’s a lesson there.

If you like to venture further afield, a valid US, Canada, UK or Schengen visa in your passport will put you in good stead. Between those three visas, almost all the countries in Europe, the Caribbean and Central America are covered. I make sure I have those three visas at any given time. It is the hack to travel to more places with a Nigerian passport.

My parting words to you: don’t be discouraged. Pick up that green passport and seek the unbeaten path. The challenges and experiences make for a riveting story.

Oh, did I tell you about the time I booked a hostel in Berlin? I didn’t realise it was a mixed dormitory until a pretty Argentine girl sauntered into the room, stripped and went into the bathroom!

The devil is a liar! Anointing cannot perish here!

Visa-free/Visa On Arrival (VOA) Countries for Nigerian Passport

Barbados, Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, Cape Verde Island, Chad, Comoro Islands, Cook Islands, Cote d’Ivoire, Djibouti, Dominica, Fiji, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Haiti, Iran, Kenya, Kiribati, Lebanon, Liberia, Madagascar, Maldives, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Micronesia, Montserrat, Mozambique, Niger, Niue, Palau Islands, Rwanda, Samoa, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, St. Kitts and Nevis, The Gambia, Timor-Leste, Togo, Tuvalu, Vanuatu.

Visa-free/Visa On Arrival (VOA) Countries for Nigerian Passport with Schengen Visa

Albania, Andora, Antigua and Barbuda, Aruba, Belize, Bonaire, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Cuba, Curaçao, Cyprus, Dominican Republic, Egypt, Georgia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Mexico, Monaco, Montenegro, Nicaragua, North Macedonia, Panama, Qatar, Romania, San Marino, Sao Tome and Principe, Serbia, Sint Maarten, Vatican City, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkiye.

Views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of TheCable.

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