Nigeria Abroad
In the process of renewing his expired passport, Nigeria Abroad’s US editor embarks on a fact-finding mission at the Consulate.
From my base in New Jersey, it’s two and a half hours to Manhattan, one of the four locations hosting the Nigerian Mission in the United States. The Consulate opens by 10:00am, I am told, yet I’m leaving my house by 4:30am: the family member who got me an appointment at the Consulate left a clear warning: “Get there as early as you can or forget it.”
Her warning echoed the accounts of many, including myself who, for months, had been frustrated by a punitive passport renewal process. After paying for the form and submitting it online in December 2020, I was unable to schedule an appointment for biometric capture. Emails to the embassy were ignored, as were phone calls.
Eleven Nigerians are ahead of me when I arrive by 7am and write my name on an improvised list. Some say they came overnight from out-of-state, determined to wait till 10am. It’s a rainy Monday morning. As more applicants gather outside, waiting for formal opening, a Consulate official in Ankara begins a cordial address minutes before 9:00am, saying those with appointments are top priority, followed by people with children, then the aged, and the rest. We will start by 9, he adds, beaming. I recognize him from media reports: Lot Egojipa, the newly appointed Consul-General.
Egojipa
The Good
Egojipa’s punctuality and involvement are uncommon ethics in the Nigerian public service. He can be seen moving from desk to desk—actively moving the day’s work like a foot soldier. After introducing myself as a Nigeria Abroad journalist, he encourages me to “observe things yourself and write independently.”
My first observation is that things are no longer as bad as before: over 90% of today’s gathering are walk-in applicants, yet they are scheduled for the biometrics albeit on a surcharge of $125 per head. From the embassy’s website, online appointments now seem open, but it appears many do not know that. The staff are courteous, the offices well-cleaned. The line is moving so fast that by 10:16am, I’m already on my way out.
Speaking to Nigeria Abroad, a Nigerian man who accompanied his wife and daughter to the Consulate, said:
“This is better. When I came in April, I was number 64. We were camped outside till 11am.”
That account corresponds with the experience of another applicant who spoke to the magazine before my visit today.
The Bad
Months after waiting in vain to renew his passport, the applicant said he finally experienced an efficiency he never thought was logistically possible: not only did he walk past the queue for his biometrics, he also got his passport a day later. It cost him $200.
“That day, one guy came with his luggage and flight ticket to show he was traveling to Nigeria that day,” this miracle testifier tells Nigeria Abroad. “The guy said he had been waiting for days, lodging in a hotel. They told him to come back in two weeks. In fact, he was ready to bribe them, but no one wanted to take his money.” Consulate officials don’t take money from just anybody; only from applicants from trusted channels, he reveals.
Days after my visit, someone on Facebook shared how she got hers:
Passport rackets have recently been uncovered in some of Nigeria’s foreign missions. The New York Consulate appears quite established in that black market, operating for over a decade—long before the new Consul arrived. In vain, videos of frustrated applicants from there have trended several times on social media. Many articles have been written. The death, last year, of Nigeria’s former ambassador to the United States, Justice Sylvanus Nsofor would lead to a fresh start, many had thought. Just this March, a group of Nigerians in New York met with Egojipa, who assured of a new dawn.
The racket now barely operates with caution. Through “trusted channels” ahead of my visit today, Nigeria Abroad obtained the phone number of a US-based agent who “helps” Nigerians get passports for a whopping $300 “facilitation fee.” The applicant must first go online to apply and pay $106 for the passport, then forward the details to the agent, whom we confirmed to be part of the racket.
“We get your passport out within 30-40 days. My facilitation service includes guiding you through this process and ensuring that your passport comes out on time,” his long message to us reads in part. “Please call or text me 2 days before you travel to the Consulate,” he emphatically notes in capital letters.
Applicants who fail to turn up on time at the Consulate will lose their fees, he warns. Given that US states are wide apart, many applicants fly into New York (or to any of Nigeria’s other Consulates in the US) a day before and lodge. “Plan to be there as early as 7am, so you can be among the first ones on the line for those people without official appointments. Also, be prepared to spend between 4-6 hours at the Consulate,” the agent states.
Besides bribing ($300) to get their passports and spending hours on the appointed date, US-based Nigerians also must fork over $106 official charge; $130 “consul admin fee,” the agent says. Put together with mailing cost, getting a Nigerian passport in America could cost around $562.35 at the black market—that is a whopping N281,000 excluding flight and lodging costs for those from afar, not to mention the worth of days off from one’s paycheck. It is why someone said the Nigerian passport has become not only a status marker in the diaspora but is also now among the most coveted in the world—simply from being administered by roadside hoodlums.
A second racket member who spoke to the magazine through a source was willing to facilitate the process at $250 if there are up to four applicants. He says there’s nothing anyone can do to end passport racketeering at the New York Consulate: that it is essentially part of why many immigration staff want to work there, and why landing the job is considered a daily windfall. The graft is equally deeply rooted in Nigerian tribal politics, hard to end, he avers.
The Ugly
For a Consulate operating an entire a 22-storey building, the level of efficiency is poor and backward. Despite the cleanliness observed, parts of the building are in disrepair. The toilets on the ground floor are horrible and one does not flush. Not all the lifts are working. Some of the floors where visitors are not allowed to see are filled with junk and debris. The lift mistakenly opened on one of such floors and this reporter, with some applicants, caught a shocking glimpse of the eyesore.
Even the location of the embassy seems out-of-place: smack in the middle of a market without a perimeter fence, such that passersby are technically walking through Nigerian foreign territory every minute. An embassy should be self-contained in its territorial space, not a thoroughfare desecrated by the casual invasion of Manhattan visitors.
Summary
Egojipa is making slow but steady changes.
However, the Consulate must invest in communication. The impression out there is that passports are impossible to obtain except through the backdoor. That is no longer true, and people need to know that. It is possible that some embassy staff linked to the racketeering are sustaining that narrative.
In fact, many US-based Nigerians with American passports now travel as foreigners to their own land and obtain visas on arrival. Others fly home with airlines that accept expired passports, and then renew same in Nigeria, again, by bribing local immigration staff. (Traveling with expired passport can mean paying higher fares and submitting additional documents at boarding). The situation is best captured in what someone once said, namely, that whether home or abroad, you can never run away from Nigeria.
The bad and ugly points notwithstanding, Egojipa, who appears poised for change, must fix broken infrastructure at the Consulate, and communicate the progress going on. Above all, he must confront the still-existing passport racket—or be defined by it.
