After staying silent about a long time nightmare of getting a Nigerian visa at the country’s foreign missions, the federal government on Sunday announced regulations to ease the visa process. Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, said the measures were part of a plan to boost tourism and make the business environment conducive and attractive to foreign investors. The federal government wants to make it easier for foreigners to secure visa on arrival, business visa, tourist visas and transit visa.
Mohammed also said, “Re-issuance of passports for change of names due to marital reasons or lost cases have been decentralised to all state commands and foreign missions to save passport holders from additional costs and the inconvenience of travelling to the service headquarters in Abuja, while additional 28 offices have been opened for the issuance of residence permits in Nigeria, bringing the issuance of Combined Expatriate Residence Permit And Aliens Cards closer to the doorstep of employers of expatriates in all 36 states and FCT.”
So when on Sunday the information minister announced the decision to make foreigners secure the Nigerian visa more easily, and remove undue bureaucratic bottlenecks Nigerians endure to get their country’s passport, many received the news with great relief. While this move is commendable, the federal government needs to sincerely and steadfastly probe the awful visa experiences to determine the issues behind the difficulties. There is need to probe the past lapses and fix them to be able to secure the future of easy visa that Nigeria craves.The sensible desire of any civilised society is that it should be the preferred destination of economically valuable migrants. It is, thus, very difficult to rationalise the obstacles being placed in the way of foreigners, who seek to visit Nigeria for business and tourism. It is even worse that these impediments are created by the same citizens who are employed and deployed to market the country abroad. Horrific pictures of what people experience to secure the Nigerian visa at the foreign missions have been widely painted, with some likening the visa process to a “camel passing through the eye of a needle.”
The probe is necessary, because the inexplicable frustrations in the Nigerian visa process tend to point to a deeper need to deal with corruption at the foreign missions. There have been allegations of bribery and other corrupt practices in the visa process at the country’s embassies and high commissions, as staff seek inducement to do their job. Many believe that most of the hindrances in the process are not born out of a desire to ensure that only genuine visa seekers are permitted to enter Nigeria. They are widely alleged to be mere pressures in aid of bribe.
If the alleged malpractices that made the Nigerian visa and passport application processes a traumatic pursuit are not exposed and dealt with, the federal government may just be introducing the proposed reforms into an environment that would set them at naught.
Addressing the consular problems would help to eliminate some of the dints that make it difficult to market Nigeria in foreign lands. It would help the drive for foreign investment in the country.
Nigeria currently ranks 169th out of 190 countries on the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business index, and immigration issues have been identified as a major cause of the low ranking. According to the World Bank, of the 190 countries ranked, Nigeria places 181 in the area of trading across borders.
Nigeria currently ranks 169th out of 190 countries on the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business index, and immigration issues have been identified as a major cause of the low ranking. According to the World Bank, of the 190 countries ranked, Nigeria places 181 in the area of trading across borders.
The country ranks 182 in terms of payment of taxes and registration of property, 180 in power availability, 174 in processing construction permits, and 140 in resolving insolvency. The World Bank says Nigeria places 139 in enforcing contracts, 138 in starting a business, 44 in getting credit, and 32 in protecting minority investors.
The embassies and high commissions are the mirror in which foreigners look to form impressions about the effectiveness and efficiency of institutions in the parent countries. Taking out needless bottlenecks and complications from the visa process would go a long way in burnishing Nigeria’s image abroad.
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