Applicable visa application fees in Nigeria and in most parts of the world are a major requirement towards processing the travel requests of Nigerians (immigrants and non-immigrants) to other countries.

To understand the importance and administrative process of obtaining a (travel) visa, is to appreciate it as a permission – commonly a sticker endorsed in the applicant’s passport or other travel document, granted by a country through its proper embassy or local consulates to a foreigner to enter and stay (temporarily or permanently), or to leave that country (also referred to as an exit visa).

This means that to be granted a visa to enter most countries, a request or application must be presented seeking the required permission or authorization to enter a country. This application is to assess one’s eligibility to be granted this permission based on the certain stated conditions or criteria to be fulfilled. An important aspect of such application process almost first commences with the payment of the applicable visa application fees. These fees cover for the administrative costs involved in processing the application by the embassy or consulate and also to an extent show the commitment of the intending traveller towards fulfilling the visa requirements.

Nevertheless, such first show of commitment through paying the visa application fees might not be enough as numerous Nigerians seeking entry to different countries for different purposes are denied visas due to various reasons – some are communicated to improve the applicant’s re-application while depressingly and unjustly, some are not communicated. If denied a visa, the situation even becomes more unfortunate when such applicants ‘realise or remember’ that some countries’ embassies or consulates have a non-refundable, non-transferable and good for only one application policy on visa application fees even though some of these fees are comparatively; low, average and high (depending to an extent on the type of visa being requested or applied for, your country of citizenship and your current location).

The refund policy on visa application fees of most embassies or consulates in Nigeria varies with for example, that of the United States of America (USA), Republic of India and Republic of South Africa (RSA) as non-refundable and non-transferable; the United Kingdom as non-refundable and refundable if your application has not been processed yet; Canada as non-refundable once processing of application commences and refundable if your application is returned to you because it was incomplete or application was made before a program opens or after a program closed; Federal Republic of Germany as non-refundable but under certain conditions there might be a reduction / exemption from the general visa fee – however, these circumstances are checked by the visa officer during the submission of the application.

Therefore, from your experiences, insights, observations and understanding of visa application fees in Nigeria, do you believe the refund policy of visa application fees should be refundable, non-refundable, or partially refundable (payment in 2 installments – second and final payment made after a visa is granted)?

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