EXCUSE ME: Honest visa application (HVA)



To whomever it may concern, I wish to apply for a visa to your country. Let me be upfront with you, if you grant me entrance to your country I am not coming back to Nigeria anytime soon.



As usual, scan my documents with your sea-blue eyes and perfect white fingers, they are all genuine. I have three masters in various fields, but who is counting. I have a wife (not through arranged marriage, as you can see from the elaborate wedding album I have included in this application) and we have legitimate children here in Nigeria but don't worry about how they are going to cope in my absence. Let me deal with that separation anxiety and trauma.

I am being honest with you, because I don't want to be the butt of your drinking jokes in highbrow Ikoyi and Victoria Island gatherings.

Truth be told, it is in your interest to grant me and many other Nigerians visas and let me tell you why.

- The exorbitant visa fees you are charging me and thousands of Nigerians will go a long way to help your sagging economy and secure your job here in Nigeria.

I don't think you really fancy eating McDonalds' happy heart-stopping meals instead of your fresh organic salad, imported steaks, Thai food or Italian a la carte that you enjoy in Lagos.

- When I get to your country, with my numerous degrees, I am willing to take jobs your fellow citizens abhor and feel are beneath their blue-blooded feet. I will flip burgers and wash dishes with bare hands. I will accept a security job in a run-down, gun-toting, hard-drug-infested, needle-sharing and high school dropout neighbourhood.

- I will happily work the graveyard shift in your nursing and old people's homes, helping the aged parents you left behind. I will be responsible for prolonging the life of your really old parents, because I will change elderly diapers, wipe their wrinkled brows. I will turn and reposition them to avoid bedsores and make sure they take their medications. At social recreation I will tell them sweet tales about the Africa they don't know and will never know. I will tell stories about a country that treats their children with human kindness and tropical warmth. But I won't say a word that while they are abandoned in a lonely nursing home, eating pureed food and drinking awful tasting Ensure, you feast regularly on three course meals in four-star restaurants, swigging SWAN water and VSOP. I will not tell your parents that you have servants tending you and your dog in a spacious seaside house, while they have only me to take care of them and eight other geriatrics in an overcrowded facility. I won't tell your aged mother that you have a gardener who replenishes your vase every morning with fresh roses, lilies and orchids while she stares at a sagging basket with a fake-plastic fig tree all day long. The secret of your lush life in my country is safe with me.

- I will not pose any security risk in your country. Your citizens can sleep with both eyes closed, because I will never engage in a course that will not benefit me directly. Nobody is going to convince me to tie a bomb round my Nigerian chest and blow myself to pieces. You have lived in Nigeria long enough to know we are not suicide happy and we do not partake in non-economically viable adventures.

- In trying to regularise my stay and wriggle out of the "illegal immigrant" stigma, I will marry one of the many single mothers left to their woes by a non-present prison happy boyfriend. I will rent her a nice apartment and stepfather her children, while my children here yawn and gape at the Western Union line. I will remove her from the welfare list, less headache for your taxpaying citizens. I know I have told you earlier that I am married and polygamy is probably unlawful in your country. But technically, my Nigerian wife and children are not resident in your country, and your law does not cross the Atlantic Ocean like captured slaves.

- In filing my papers, I will make one of your quack lawyers richer.

- Your Internal Revenue department is free to overtax me, your police can harass me, your immigration officers can detain me despite my legitimate documents of lawful marriage and co-habitation, my employers can deny me promotions because of my accent and skin colour, my boss who has only high school certificate can correct my English language, your country can dehumanise me and see me as a tree-living National Geographic creature. I won't blame you because my visionless leaders compromised me.

Thanks for your anticipated co-operation, and please remember you have more to gain by granting me this visa.

Absolutely BRILLIANT

In facts, you will be granted even the green card, not only visa this time!!!!!

This is mindblowing & brilliant,also scary. . in a good way ! Did you write this yourself,or it was culled ?

LOL

I vote that this should be forwarded to all the embassies in Nigeria, especially US and UK.

Dinggle,
This is a nice one. I really admire your brilliant writing. You are very close to the truth but, be aware that what you have said does not apply to everyone that is leaving outside Nigeria. I am actually responding to this trend from outside Nigeria and I can confidently tell you that I have never been harrassed by any policemen, I am daily celebrated by these white folks because, I have something to offer and they pay for it. I travelled out of this country for official reason every quarter and they pay for everything. What I have personally discover it is that, it is a matter of WHAT YOU KNOW and not WHOM YOU KNOW. I am glad to let you know that one of the present Vice President of Mastercard of this country is a yoruba man, he graduated from Unilag. He was working with Zenith bank before moving here.

Yes, many are replical of all you have said but, the major points that I want to strike is that, never leave Nigeria without a vision. Coming abroad is good but, many that work as slaves here never have marketable skills. The question is what are the skills you have before coming here? This is more than your degrees and certificates. Having Masters degree in Mechanical engineering is not enough. How much of personal development/out of school training do you give yourself. Knowing how the system works where you are going really matters. This is exactly what separates the Nigerian slaves here from the problem solvers who are daily taking control. I am glad I am one of them and never regret of ever travelling out of Nigeria.

@Poster : Well composed,


@agric. You have a point also. A man with no vision is one who no future.