Yesterday the 27th October, 2015 is a day I will not forget in a hurry. It’s the worst day in my 5 years of being in South Africa. I had to travel to Johannesburg for the BVN exercise as a statutory requirement by my bank. The exercise was conducted by OIS services. The procedure is as such: You are to book an appointment online and then appear for capture with an amount of R615 fee.

I had earlier booked my appointment for 11am on the 27th October and then travelled through the night for my BVN capture. I arrived at the capture center at about 9am. When I saw the chaos and that it was actually conducted by Nigerians at the Nigerian consulate, my heart sank. Of course there was no queue. We were only about 15 people outside. It was survival of the fittest. There was no provision for us to even sit. We stood outside the gate in the sun while we waited for instructions from inside. Those who were “connected” came later, went in, had their capture done in no time. Others who had no appointments also went in somehow (the Nigerian way).

To cut a long story short, I finally got to be captured at about 4pm (7 hours after I arrived), after going through the most harrowing experience of my life since I came to this country. I am still too traumatized to give details.
The essence of my writing this is to reiterate why we Nigerians should treat each other well. I think we should not complain about being treated badly by others when we ourselves denigrate our fellow citizens abroad and within the country. I will never, I repeat never get this kind of treatment from a South African institution. I have visited consulates for visas and you get to be treated like a human being. Why are we different? Why can’t we just learn to do things orderly? Just a simple queue would go a long way to create order.

I am using this opportunity to call on OIS services and whoever have to deal with people in a diplomatic capacity to please learn to treat people with respect. Please let us queue where need be, every human being is important, you don’t need to know who I am to treat me with dignity. We should yearn to be the change that we want to see in Nigeria. God bless Nigeria!