By Azu Ishiekwene
Many Nigerians experience visa refusal daily. They don’t need the National Security Adviser, Malam Nuhu Ribadu, to invoke hell against any country to make the point.
Unfortunately, Ribadu’s fury after the Canadian High Commission refused visas to Chief of Defence Staff General Christopher Musa and other officials for the winter Invictus Games in Vancouver Whistler was directed at an unlikely target. Canada can be criticised for many things, but Ottawa’s faults do not include consular meanness.
In the last five years, Canada has been the third-biggest destination for Nigerian immigrants, especially students, after the US and the UK. Multiple sources, including reports by Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), suggest that Canada, New Zealand, and the United Arab Emirates have relatively friendly visa policies for Africans.
Schengen refusals
If Ribadu needs any idea of what a visa hell looks like, he should look at Europe, specifically the Schengen area. According to a BusinessDay report, Nigeria ranked among the top five countries globally for Schengen visa refusals between 2022 and 2023.
Nigerian applicants submitted 86,815 requests three years ago, with 39,189 rejected—a 45.1 percent refusal rate. By 2023, the number of applications had increased to 105,926, but 42,920 were denied, reflecting a slightly lower rejection rate of 40.8 percent. At the rate at which President Donald Trump is going, sooner than later, the US might upstage Schengen as the world’s meanest visa gateway.
There will hardly be anyone to speak up for the casualties. When ordinary citizens are denied visas, they must deserve it, right? But General Musa is not an ordinary citizen. He is the jewel of Nigeria’s military top brass and should receive full consular courtesies on a good day without a fuss.
What happened?
So, what happened? Why did the Canadian High Commission refuse to issue visas to General Musa and the delegation of military officers for the Invictus Games? Let’s dial back.
Many years ago, citizens didn’t need visas to visit other Commonwealth countries, at least for the first 60 days.
Even by 1962, when many of these countries imposed visa requirements due to immigration pressures, a few, including Canada, maintained visa-free policies longer than most. It still maintains a visa-free policy for a few Commonwealth countries, while Britain has a much longer list of visa exemptions for some Commonwealth countries, including Malawi and Botswana.
Africa talks the talk
Today, even intra-African travel is a big struggle for Nigerian passport holders, despite all the talk by AU about visas on arrival. Thanks to the shameful conduct of a few desperadoes who have elevated the risk factor of the green passport and successive irresponsible governments that have plunged the country into the current mess, travelling with a Nigerian passport is not easy.
If the country’s status has moved from visa-on-arrival up to the early 1970s in many Commonwealth (and even non-Commonwealth countries) to a status of cautious admission and even outright hostility toward ranking government officials, Ribadu does not need to invoke hell. It’s a metaphor that painfully reminds us of our odyssey. Why was a four-star general in the Nigerian army denied a visa in a manner that has turned into a street brawl?
Cracks within
A few days after Ribadu asked the Canadian High Commission to “go to hell”—an expression that might have shocked even the hosts of hell’s consular services—it came to light that the refusal may have had more to do with the tardiness of a desk officer at the army’s protocol department than with the Canadian High Commission in Abuja.
The Nation newspaper quoted competent sources as saying that the Army failed to attach the note verbale from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that should have accompanied the visa applications.
If that is correct – and the military authorities have not denied the report – how was that Canada’s fault? The question still needs to be asked: How did 14 of the 21 soldiers enrolled get visas when the officials and delegation leader could not be processed?
Calm down…
Ribadu is not just another government official. He would be justified in feeling slighted about a perceived diplomatic slight on Nigeria’s contingent, even if it was a contingent attending the Munich beer festival. But his office demands a sober and dignified response, not the sort of thing Idi-Amin might have said on the eve of evicting thousands of Asians from Uganda.
The report of official tardiness was sobering enough, but the purpose was no less puzzling. Of course, Prince Harry’s brilliant idea of the Invictus is to give wounded servicemen and veterans a chance to connect and bond with others as they remind us of their sacrifices for our safety and security and rediscover meaning in a shared humanity. But since its start in 2014, Invictus has been a summer game.
Their winter games
If the organisers decided to extend it to the winter to include adaptive sports, such as alpine skiing, Nordic skiing, skeleton and wheelchair curling, among others – hardly core Nigerian sports – that is fair enough. Yet, how any of these sports seriously concern Nigeria when only 15 African countries have participated in the Winter Olympics in 58 years between 1960 and 2022, and of this number, only seven have done so more than once, is another matter.
Winter is not our thing. The urgency of the task at home – a stubborn rise in the wave of insurgency in the Northeast and North West, despite reported gains in some areas – requires the full attention of the military’s top command. General Musa should have delegated attendance.
How not to be angry
Managing the refusal was no less scandalous. If a bunch of secondary school students on a Sudoku exhibition tour to Kathmandu was refused visas and decided to moan about it on TikTok, I can understand that.
But it defies common sense that Nigeria’s top security adviser would dramatise a matter well within his reach to investigate and take remedial steps, if necessary. Ribadu neither did himself nor General Musa any favours by his intemperate remarks. He gave ordinary folks something to jeer about and made the country look ridiculous.
Can’t stay down
Idiots may have brought the country to its knees, down from a place where Africa, the Commonwealth, and the rest of the world looked up to us and our passport ranked among the most respected. But nothing says we must stay there.
The job at hand is to dig us out of that hole, a significant point Ribadu made but sadly lost in his fit of anger. Modern consular diplomacy includes, among other things, a timely, trusted, and secure data-sharing system that gives parties to a transaction reasonable comfort. Where that fails, nasty surprises are inevitable.
Not much can get done by tantrums or by a false sense of entitlement.
Ishiekwene is the Editor-In-Chief of LEADERSHIP and the author of the book Writing for Media and Monetising It.
