Freedom of Travel
The Blessed of the Earth

How free are we to travel wherever we want to go? Nigerian author Chika Unigwe asks herself this question and is faced with the hard truth that travel is not free for everyone. It depends on your passport. 

By Chika Unigwe

Years ago, I was invited to a festival in South Africa. I called the embassy to ask how long it would take to obtain a visa and what the requirements were. “What passport do you hold?” There was an edge to the question. A sharpness like a blade. It didn’t seem merely curious. There was something else there, maybe a suspicion that my accent had triggered. It might have been my imagination, I am a writer after all. “Nigerian.” I was told it would take some weeks (which I didn’t have) but that it wasn’t a given that I would even get a visa. Not on a Nigerian passport. The voice was now almost dismissive. The subtext was that I shouldn’t bother trying. “And on a Belgian passport?” The voice, incredulous, asked if I had a Belgian passport. I said I did. Then why did I want to travel on a Nigerian one? I didn’t have the energy to explain that I didn’t want to travel to Africa on a European passport, that it seemed wrong. Embarrassing almost. That it was a matter of pride for me. So I said nothing. The voice, the sharpness blunted into something shiny and smooth, and told me to pass by the next morning to drop my passport. I could collect it, stamped and ready to go, by noon.  

The incredulity of the South African embassy staff is understandable. There are levels to passports, as we say in Nigeria. The Nigerian passport is ranked 98th out of 199 on the 2022 Henley index. With it, one can enter into only 45 countries visa free or get visa on arrival, and in the latter case, entry is not always guaranteed. A Nigerian Twitter user complained recently of arriving Mozambique - which has no embassy in Nigeria and whose website said she could get a visa on arrival - only to be turned back because she needed a letter of invitation from a Mozambican resident. The immigration officers were not only unhelpful, they were rude. They treated her like a criminal and robbed her of what she had hoped would be a nice holiday, in addition to losing her money. When she posted her story on Twitter, her timeline was flooded with stories of others who have suffered the indignities showered upon the unfortunate bearers of passports that are neither powerful nor desirable and therefore its owners not entirely deserving of respect. Why, the South African embassy staff might have told her colleagues later, would anyone with a European passport be foolish enough to want to travel on a passport that would only complicate things for her?

Blissful Forgetfulness

I choose my battles. So these days, I only use my Nigerian passport to get into Nigeria. With a Belgian passport, I have easy access to almost any country I would wish to visit, and that access, in the way that privilege often does, has both shielded me from and blinded me to the kind of unnecessary complications and humiliations that travelling or attempting to travel while Nigerian can bring. I can make – and have pre-COVID made –  travel plans without needing to worry about whether or not I would be able to get a visa. I flash my green card when I get back into the United States where I live now. In my blissful forgetfulness, I asked a well-off Nigerian friend last year why she wouldn’t come to visit me. I knew money wasn’t an issue for her. She said her visa had expired and the earliest date she could get for an interview was in 2023. Then she sighed and said she didn’t have time for the anyhowness of the American embassy. She wasn’t that desperate. Those who were, were trying to find people to bribe to put them ahead of the queue.

In researching this piece, I spoke to someone who told me of her sister - a Nigerian passport holder - who was living and working in the US, and who was denied a UK visa for having “insufficient funds”, which really is a code for “we are certain you will enter our country and disappear”. Why would her sister, she said, give up a life of legal residency in the US for one of an undocumented person in the UK? And yet young American and European students can move around the world fluidly - travelling to African countries should they wish - without anyone worrying about how much money they’ve got on their accounts. Another friend told me of a man who was denied a visa for the US because - despite having a job and a family in Lagos - there wasn’t enough proof that the ties he had in Nigeria were strong enough for him not to abandon them and spend his years looking over his shoulder in New York wondering when he would be deported. Someone else assured me that the US embassy has a quota for the number of people allowed for interviews or allowed to be issued a visa, and once that quota is reached, that’s it. “They will just be sending you from pillar to post.” Competition is stiff and once through, once that visa is stamped, whether it is for one week or for one year, the relief is immense.

The Stakes of Being Allowed or Denied Entry 

Nevertheless, Nigerian passport holders know that that visa in their passport doesn’t necessarily mean that one would be allowed into the country. On my first trip to Belgium, I was detained for several hours because of some “irregularity” on my visa. A phone call to the consulate in Lagos would have cleared it, but Nigerian passports (and by extension Nigerians) have long been considered suspect.  Every one leaving is considered a potential economic immigrant. A friend’s sister had a valid visa for the US but was turned back when her British Airways flight had a layover in London. Airline staff said she looked pregnant and was likely just coming to the United States to have a baby. Another person’s brother who was coming with his family from Nigeria to spend some time in the US were detained at the Atlanta airport and bundled off on the next available flight back home because the immigration officer who saw them had somehow determined that they would try to stay on as undocumented people rather than return to Nigeria. The siblings and cousins who had been waiting excitedly for them and had organised a party were also left broken hearted.

Sometimes, the stakes of being denied entry or denied a visa are not just being unable to see your siblings and attending the party being thrown in your honour. Sometimes it is being unable to attend prestigious residences and conferences abroad. Being unable to hold your first grandchild. Being unable to be at the side of a sick or dying relative. Missing the opportunity of saying goodbye. It is only in writing this piece that I excavated a memory long forgotten. In the memory, I am watching a movie – the title escapes me now – and a group of friends decide on the spur of the moment to buy tickets and travel abroad, to somewhere fun. I remember fantasising about what it must be like. To have the freedom to travel. To be unencumbered by long lines at the embassy. By the fear of whether or not you’ll get a visa. To make plans with no anxieties. To just get up and go. Those are the blessed of the earth.