Japheth Omojuwa: Who’s got our 20
quid at the Nigerian High Commission
in London? (YNaija Frontpage)
They claim the sum is for postal
order but nothing gets posted to
you because you then have to join
a queue, take a train or whatever
works for you and still visit the
Nigerian House for what was
supposed to have been covered by
your 20 bucks.
£20 is not a lot of money. It only really
takes on an air of importance when you
multiply it by a thousand. That way, you
get £20,000 which translates to about
N5,200,000.
I don’t have an idea of how many
requests for the Nigerian passport the
Nigerian High Commission in the United
Kingdom gets in a month but whatever
that number is, the nation’s embassy in
the United Kingdom gets to bank £20
from each applicant. They claim the sum
is for postal order but nothing gets
posted to you because you then have to
join a queue, take a train or whatever
works for you and still visit the Nigerian
House for what was supposed to have
been covered by your 20 pounds.
This is apparently not new and it is
indeed one of the realities that make the
Nigerian High Commission in the United
Kingdom one of the worst run
embassies or high commissions in the
world. The reports and feelers from
social media on this reality confirm say
as much.
Many Nigerians would rather try to get
other passports for their kids or have
their kids go elsewhere to access their
fundamental human right, rather than
subject themselves to the Nigerian High
Commission now renowned largely for
its incompetence.
A look through the organisation’s
website here has a particular line stand
out from a page lumped with ill-
arranged passport application process.
Written in caps as I would like to re-
write just to make you appreciate the
irony of this reality… THE HIGH
COMMISSION IS COMMITTED TO SERVING
YOU MUCH BETTER. WE DEEPLY
APPRECIATE YOUR UNDERSTANDING AND
COOPERATION… the only cooperation
between Nigerians and the commission
as far as I know is that of a system they
have come to accept as a disaster they
must either bear or ignore.
I don’t expect that a short piece like
mine would clean a house that has
apparently been dirty for ages but
someone somewhere had better know
and understand that as long as we
cannot deal with small problems like a
citizen paying £20 with a promise that
his/her passport will be mailed with
same amount, only for 100 out 100
citizens who make these payments to go
and collect such physically, we will not or
may never deal with crimes involving the
big time thieves in Abuja and most if not
all the State capitals.
Heck, in a nation where a former self-
declared enemy of the state, a man who
only four years or so ago raised arms
against the state yet finds himself on a
committee supposedly reserved to help
cater for privileged citizens who will be
state-sponsored for Hajj… you just know
we need help all over the place. How
about we start from somewhere? What
if a mad citizen decides not to pay the
£20 and makes the most embarrassing
noise possible? Do we just give up on all
these anomalies or do we at least try to
correct the ones that directly affect us?
Someone at the Nigerian High
Commission in the UK must know exactly
what happens to the multiples of £20
that Nigerians are forced to pay for the
service that never gets rendered. I hear
it is easier to get a corrupt Nigerian
politician to go to jail for stealing – they
don’t steal, they misappropriate – than it
is to get the High Commission to process
your passport.
Is someone reading? Can something get
done or are we just doomed to always
do it the most wrong way it can ever get
done? But then, what do we do when
we decide to take all the bullsh*t thrown
at us under different claims and
excuses? In the end, you’d find that, no
matter what we think those at the helm
deny us of, we are at times guilty of
handling our rights to them, sometimes
on a platter of £20.

They you should always bear in mind that those that represents a rogue government,be it in mars are rogues themselves.If you can prove that they have defruaded you of twenty pounds,then take it up with the british law enforcement.Somehow they will break through the diplomatic barriers and expose the criminals.