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I saw today's #Aprilinleo prompt and I couldn't stop laughing at the incident that happened a few years ago while I was trying to get a valid Nigerian passport ad a Nigerian and the stress we have to go through in just procuring any passport in my country.
A year ago, when the presidential election was ongoing, we were all advised in my church to go to the INEC office to get voter cards, just so we could vote our choice into sit. Our pastor promised to go with us to the office and make procuring the passport easy and also encouraged us to go for it, even though many of us never had it in mind because as Nigerians living in this country, many of us all know the frustration, stress, and headache that comes with having a valid Nigerian passport but since he said he was going to make it easier for us, few of us in the church decided to go for it.
So we came together and made plans on how to get to that place. On that faithful Monday morning, we all boarded a tricycle down to our destination although the distance was a very long one but we got there quite early and when we got there, our pastor wasn't there yet but the shocking part was even though we were there as early as 8:am in the morning, we found a crowd of people who we felt must have been there since around 6:am just to be able to get their stuff and be able to meet up with work but unfortunately couldn't because even the officers were not on sit as at that time of the day.
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Well, we had no option but to wait with the multitude of crowds, and some of us started losing hope of procuring the card that fateful day because of how many there were. The frustrating part of that day was that as fate would have it, a heavy rain pour started that lasted for hours and because the crowd was too much and no shade, we had no shade above us to protect us from the rain. So we stood under the rain and got drenched from our heads down to our toes.
When the rain finally subsided, we stood there with nobody still answering us and we were still waiting, till we got dried by the breeze and sun that came after the rain. When it was noon, the officers came but were less concerned about the crowd they left standing in the queue since the early hours of the morning.
I guess my pastor had a friend who was in the system too because immediately after the officers started opening their offices, my pastor drove in and asked us to stand in line, while he went in to meet the officer, who came out and got our name and started attending to us.
It is a day we are never going to forget in a hurry in our lives, before we were done with the whole process, we were not only hungry, but we were exhausted and frustrated at the turnout of the event.
Getting any valid and acceptable passport in my country Nigeria has never been an easy plight, it is either the people involved are extorting outrageous amounts from us or they are frustrating someone before we can get the passport.
The funny part is that none of those passports are powerful outside the border, although they are used for important issues like when someone is opening a bank account, just one or two of those are needed for the procedures and even though we need them for our national or government registration, they still are never easy to get.
Thank you for reading!!!