My “OLD” passport

A lot of people have been asking me what it is like, to live in Nigeria after being away for so long. My usual response is usually that living in Nigeria has its negatives and its positives and I am learning to appreciate both the good and the bad. I also remind them that living in America also has the good and the bad sides, and that overall where you would prefer to live will depend on what is most important to you at a particular time. Personally, I love living in Nigeria as much as I love living in America because I love living 🙂 but thats not to say that I can’t nag about the bad things.

So some of us know that some stressors that are associated with living abroad are traffic tickets, really high rents, high taxes, how difficult it is to save, etc. In Nigeria the biggest stressor is lack of good lawmaking and law enforcement and believe me when I say it could be as frustrating as it is scary, depending on where and how you encounter either one. I had my first encounter with poor law making almost as soon as I reported for work in Nigeria. I was scheduled to take a course in Europe even before I reported to work in Nigeria. Looking back, I wish I had been proactive enough to get my Schengen visa before leaving the US. By the time I got around to it, I didn’t have 3 weeks to wait for a visa.

So I arrived in Nigeria about 6 weeks before the start of my course in Europe, thinking I have a lot of time to get my visa. My first shocker came when I found out that I couldn’t apply for a visa through the company until I got a series of approval to go for a course which has already been paid for by the US end of the company. Oh well, that is not a big deal I thought, I already informed my boss about the course during my assignment preview trip so I should be able to get it approved really fast. It wasn’t as easy as I thought to get my trip approved because of people chasing and IT issues, but that is not the heart of my story so I will save you the details and say it ended up taking me about 3 weeks!!!!

When I finally got my approvals and started the visa application process, I was informed that I had the “OLD” Nigerian passport and that I need to obtain a new passport before I could apply for a visa. I politely told the guy in the travel team that my passport is valid until September 2014 and I had no intention of getting a new passport before then. Never in my American thinking mind did I think that a Government who issued an international passport and said it was valid until 2014 could turn around and say the passport was no longer valid. I even educated him that my two children have two versions of the US passport and that the fact that the US decided to change the passport before my older son’s passport expired doesn’t make his passport invalid. After failing to convince me, the guy took my passport and submitted the application because I insisted.

When I discussed this with other colleagues, they told me to go ahead and apply for a new International passport as they were sure that my passport will be returned as embassies are no longer issuing visa on the “OLD” passport. I really just felt they were somewhat ignorant because, I had submitted my passport to the Dutch embassy in Houston just a few weeks earlier and they didn’t have a problem with issuing a visa on my so called “OLD” passport. The only reason I didn’t get the visa then, was because they needed three weeks to process the visa and I had less than one week in the US before I had to resume for my assignment in Nigeria. Some colleagues even offered tips and advice on how to get a new passport fast, one person introduced me to a woman who worked for immigration and who asked me to pay more than three times the official passport cost for a quick new passport!

I didn’t really do anything about applying for a new passport and a few days later I wish I had. With only a little over 2 weeks left to my trip, I was informed by our travel person in Abuja that my passport was rejected and that I would have to send a new passport to Abuja to get my visa. A colleague who missed a training course because of the same thing told me how we went about getting his new passport, and believe me when I say there was a Million and one steps to it. First you applied online, then you get a print out, next you go to some specific banks to pay, and then to your local Government to get a letter of something, next you go to the court to get something else, after which you get someone to sign a guarantor’s form for you, and then you go to either Benin or Asaba where my nearest immigration offices were, to take a picture and fingerprint, and most likely return there the next day or some days later, to pick up the new passport. The process took me over a week!

Now I had a week left! Thankfully I got the visa just in time to attend the course. Like I said living in Nigeria comes with the good and the bad, and for this trip the good part of living in Nigeria was that since there was no company credit cards in Nigeria, I was given cash for my hotel and meals and I was able to save enough to go shopping 🙂

Anyways for those of you who live outside Nigeria and do not have the luxury of passing the Muritala airport in Lagos where you will see an A4 paper posted in an inconspicuous place saying that the Federal Govt. have said that the old passport will be invalid for travel after December 31st 2010, please get a new international passport before attempting to travel in or out of Nigeria after that time…

Cheers.