A lot of people (not
all the people – for example, not my mom) – got excited when they heard I was
moving to Nigeria (FOR THE YEAR – as Tejas always wants to make sure I qualify
– I love you babe!) saying “ohhhh…that’s so cool…I’d love to have a reason to
visit that part of the world!” I love your enthusiasm. But you’re not going to
come visit.
Here’s the thing…a
Nigerian tourist visa is incredibly expensive and incredibly time consuming.
And I mean like…super really expensive and super really time consuming.
First off…why?
Honestly, I don’t really know. It might be because tourism is not nearly as
important in Nigeria as many other African countries or it might be because
Trump hates Nigeria (but actually that can’t be the reason because it’s not
like the US is singled out…)…but these are just guesses because in any googling
of “why is Nigeria visa so expensive?” all I get are lists
upon lists
that say a Nigerian visa is one of the most expensive and cumbersome to get.
What do I mean by
this? (1) The process sucks and (2) It’s super expensive.
- The process sucks
- The process is 7 steps. You’ll enter your information and click through all happily…and THEN when you get to “submit” on Step 7…you’ll get an error message that says “Issue on Step 3”. No more detail. Just an Issue on Step 3. So you click back to Step 3. In doing so, you lose all your data for Steps 4-7. It’s unclear what the error is in Step 3…so you start trial-and-error…changing one thing…filling out the rest of the application…and then getting the same error message. You want to give up, but you can’t. Because this is a necessary step. This process took me about 2 hours.
- FYI – advice if you ever do apply for a Nigerian visa…I believe the issue in Step 3 was that I used punctuation in a city name – when I changed my last international trip from St. Emillion, France to Paris, France…no more issues! (Yayyy engagement memories!)
- It requires online payment. Fine. It’s 2020. Makes sense. Except…two things:
- It literally does not let you use a secure web browser…which yeah…most web browsers are. The error message you get for this really aggressively tells you to “STOP TRYING TO SCRAMBLE WEB ADDRESS” which…yeah…is what an encrypted browser will do. There’s no way to turn this off. I could only get it to work when I used Internet Explorer. (lolz)
- US credit card companies are like “oh hell no” when they get a charge from Nigeria. And then…you descend into credit card black hole…the error messages I had here were:
- First, my credit card rejected (obvi)
- Then, I called my credit card company and tried again – it got rejected again
- Then, my credit card company was like “oops – we didn’t press the button – try again”
- Then, I tried again – this time I got an error message that I had tried using my credit card too many times so the Nigerian embassy was rejecting it
- So then I had to start the process over again with a new card
- New card charged me foreign transaction fees. Sweet.
Related – my credit card has been cancelled
twice since arriving because of “suspicious charges” – but every time they say
“oh no you don’t have to tell us when you’re travelling…and I’m like…dudes…can
you stop turning off my card every time I try to buy dinner??”
- The visa application is “seamlessly” integrated with your Google login. Like why? This meant that me and Tejas had to use separate computers to fill out our vis applications. Also meant having to go through Google 2-step verification when switching over to IE for payment…because like…obviously I’ve never even bothers to login to my google account on IE…
- If you fuck up, there’s no going back. I messed up something on my visa application and immediately called. They said they could not edit it…but that I was welcome to submit a NEW application and then submit for reimbursement for the first.
- I’ll just say…I’m so effing happy that I used Chase for my first application because 2.5 months and 25 emails later, I obviously have not seen any evidence that they will reimburse me for the first go-around. (Chase agreed to just reimburse me.)
- Obviously, I had to use a different card for my second visa application. I don’t know why. Just because obviously.
So that’s the online
process. Then two (plus) more absurd things have to happen:
- For a tourist visa, you have to submit:
- Letter of invitation from somebody with a Nigerian passport (so I cannot invite you with my workers’ permit…I need to ask somebody in the office to send the invite)
- Evidence of flights and hotel (fine – a lot of countries require this)
- Your effing three most recent bank statements I am not kidding (don't worry fam - I blacked out my account number)
- You have to go to the Nigerian consulate in person for an interview on a date that they assign to you
Obviously…they charge
you another fee when you go for your interview. Which gets me to the fee side…
- $160 – advertised visa application fee. Lolz.
- $20 – online credit card processing fee. Because in 2020, credit card processing fees are 12.5%
- $XX – whatever foreign transaction fee you’re charged by your credit card company
- $30 – “Embassy Processing Fee” – the charge when you go to the embassy – which is obviously a lot more than that…it’s actually…
- $85 - $95 – the “rush processing fee” at the embassy – aka the only way to maybe see your passport again
- ~$265 – to do it yourself
I had a friend try and
do this himself (for him and his boss). He told me he went to the embassy every
day for 2 weeks and was told that they weren’t ready. He finally took $1000
cash with him, gave it to the security guard…who came back with the passports
within 5 minutes.
Let’s say…you have a
job, so going to the embassy multiple times for an “interview” isn’t really
convenient for you…you also have the option to pay a third party company to
deal with all the waiting and bribing for you. This does not come cheap.
First of all, these
companies can burn with payday-lenders IMHO. They aggressively try and steal
your money. Their forms are a maze of “check this box if you don’t want us to
charge you $50 to register with the US embassy abroad” (a free service you can
very easily do yourself online) and “uncheck this box if you don’t want us to
not charge you $100 to save a digital copy of your passport” (you mean
like…email a copy of my passport to myself? Also…which option means I don’t
have to pay for this??). Anyways…as much as you don’t want to…you end up having
to use one of these thieves of a company…so then your costs will be:
- $60 – going rate for non-express service
- $100 – least expensive option for shipping everything. (I saved $$ by going to the office to pick the damn thing up…but like…it doesn’t cost $50 to ship within NYC)
- $290 – an increased fee from the Nigerian embassy for “third party processing” … aka they increase the required bribe if you signal that you’re rich enough to pay a third party company to go to the interview for you
- Notably – the UK doesn’t allow civil workers to pay these “facilitating payments”...and shockingly…the internet seems to think it’s a lot cheaper/easier to get your Nigerian passport in the UK
- $630+ to get somebody to do it for you
Of course - when I arrived at the Lagos airport...every American stood in line clutching the same envelope from the same agency that "assists" with the Visa application process. Thieves.
So I love you all. But I’m pretty sure Tejas is the only person who will
put up with the stress and cost of a Nigerian visa to come visit me. Actually
that’s not true…I did the online process for him because I figured he’d never
get through the forms himself. And my company is reimbursing for the costs of
his visa. If that wasn’t the case…I’m pretty sure not even Tejas would have
come to visit me!
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| Yes I was applying for a business entry visa (NOT a worker's permit though) -- but I submitted 7 beautifully colored and labeled folders to keep all required elements in order. Kisses. |
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