Consequences of Nigeria's frequent diplomatic eruptions with the United Arab Emirates, by 'Tope Fasua

Dubai

I remember about 22 years ago I applied for my first UK visa. It was the usual hell. Difficulty getting appointments, then apprehensions when finally getting the appointment and anything can happen that day or with the visa officers. Their fault then, as well as now, was to deny you the visa because it was as if you as a Nigerian were probably fleeing to their country or going to work there illegally. 22 years ago we had already ceased to be a 'protected' member of the Commonwealth who could enter and leave the UK at will (perhaps because they had come to bother us with their colonialism or in atonement for their exploitation of our resources). We had become pariahs for our colonizers and our people were traumatized to perfection at their embassies. In my case, at the High Commission in Abuja in the UK, there was this tall, stern woman with very blond hair who just didn't seem to like my face. She kept bouncing my application and asking all sorts of things. I was already a bank manager at the time, but she won't have any of that. After a number of trials in which I constantly lost money to the UK High Commission (an abusive practice of charging poor people in poor countries for unperformed jobs, which the penal code says to be 419), I finally got the visa to travel to the UK. I have not attempted in 22 years to stay there illegally or do any unauthorized work there.

My experience with the US visa was a little less stressful if weird. In 2003, I had to get to the US Embassy in Eleke Crescent (now Walter Carrington) at 7am, even though we didn't get in until around 10am. For me, my wife, and my two-year-old daughter that day was eight hours straight on my feet. The kids were hungry and crying everywhere but you daren't give up your place in the queue and the general bullying of the environment and process meant you'd rather not even let the security guard know that you might not have that interview that day. So we endured. While the British High Commission then interviewed virtually everyone, it had booths or small offices for this purpose. This offered the contestants some privacy even though all of the conversation in each room could still be heard by those seated in the living room, their hearts pounding in their mouths so loudly that the beats could come from a drum band. Getting a foreign visa was like sitting in God's final judgment - maybe worse. The Americans were as usual, less subtle. You stood by the window in front of everyone's gaze as you are grilled, your shame becomes everyone's sport and knowledge. American investigators use psychology. And every once in a while, they deconstruct candidates, leaving them deflated and bewildered – often wrongly so. Meanwhile, outside the US Embassy, ​​where there was supposed to be a waiting room, a clever pastor had set up a service for those going inside the embassy. The song that day before offering time, was “Today, today, Jesus will answer me, today, today”. Veteran candidates made a point of making a generous donation inside the offering basket, then throwing and binding all the haters who had denied them visas over time.

That was then. Foreign embassies have earned trillions of naira or possibly even trillions of dollars from Nigerians applying to visit their country. A sane nation would have tried to find out how much our people have lost over time, but we haven't. There ...