Written by josiah I Missed My First Baby's Birth I live in Ilorin, Kwara State - been here for nearly four years now. I do most of my work on the internet, and I am married to the most beautiful woman alive. Together we gave birth to a lovely daughter only last year. My wife has had an international passport for about four years. Last year when we learnt we were pregnant, we wanted her to travel abroad to deliver our baby because she had had several miscarriages in the past, which our able medical system were regrettably unable to prevent. So, she applied for a visa and thanks to her office backing her up, she was awarded the six-month visa which would enable her travel to the UK and stay there until she delivered the baby. I wanted to go with her - I was supposed to go with her; but there was one big snag - I did not yet have my international/ECOWAS passport. So I applied online, like we have all been told to, paid through the bank the mandatory sum of NGN 9,500.00 or so, and went to the Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS) office here in Kwara State to deliver my credentials, go through the normal process, and get the passport at the end of the allotted time required. I do not remember the name of the NIS officer who responded and took my case, but I must say that he was very kind to me, very attentive, and obviously very good at his job. Even though I had electronically filled out all the required details for the passport application, he made me do it all over again, this time in my handwriting, on a printout from the online website of the NIS, and then asked me to make the payment. This was where the problem started. I told him I had already paid through the bank - Sterling Bank at the time, I believe (through the Pay4Me function made available on the website) - and I showed him my payment receipt, while re-asserting that I had already completed the entire process he was making me go through all over again. He glanced at my handiwork and conceded that I had indeed done everything right and did not have to repeat it. It was then that he now mentioned to me that I was still supposed to pay an additional "Administrative Charge" of NGN 5,000.00 (five thousand naira) before my application could be processed! The funny thing is, I both had the money and was willing to pay it. I told him to keep processing the application while I went out to the ATM to withdraw the cash. I told him I hoped the receipt would be ready by the time I returned. He told me "No", there was no receipt for this Administrative Charge I was being levied with - I just had to pay it in order to get my passport application processed. I became concerned and showed him my printout from the NIS website which clearly laid out at the top of the page that it was illegal to pay any other monies to anybody else beyond the NGN 9,500.00+ I had already paid, and that I could be punishable by law, even thrown into prison if I did. I clearly remember him laying it out for me in no uncertain terms that the Head Office of the NIS in Abuja only put that information there because they had no idea what challenges the local offices were facing in the daily running of the agency. He particularly mentioned that certain overhead costs were incurred, such as running the generator, etc. (after that one example, he gave no other). I told the officer that as a Christian I could not pay any illegal money, especially one without a receipt to track it. I should make myself clear - it was a thing of principle for me, not the cost. I totally had more than enough money to pay for a passport several times over, but it was wrong to be asked to make a payment that was both morally and constitutionally wrong. This much I know: from everyone I have spoken to then and since, everybody in the State of Kwara who desires to have this critical document can only do it by paying that bribe. which says a lot for the thousands, if not millions, of Nigerians who already own the document - it's too sad to think. Just too sad. I told him I couldn't; he tore out my application from the NIS file he had stapled it into and handed it back to me. It was disconcerting to say the least. I decided I would travel to Abuja to do it the right way since they certainly would be more careful about being so blatantly dishonest so close to the seat of power. but I could not make the trip soon enough due to work and academic reasons. As such, my wife was already in the United Kingdom and had only a couple of weeks to delivery before I was finally able to take the seven-hour drive to the capitol and present my papers at the headquarters. Again, for the record, it wasn't about the money - five thousand naira I can afford; why the trip was costing me nothing shy of twenty thousand. It was about the principle: it can and should be done right! People should not have to break the law or do something inherently evil in order to be able to survive in a country like Nigeria. To cut a long story quite short, my application was again rejected in Abuja because it already had a Kwara State address on it. I was summarily sentenced to return whence I came from and go complete the process there. I returned, but I refused to apply any longer. Again, I will keep names out of it because this officer - this time a woman whose name and phone number I recall quite clearly - was extremely nice and polite to me while I was with her. I wouldn't want anything untoward to happen to her or to anybody on my account. My only desire is for this evil to stop. Incidentally, my wife delivered our little beautiful bundle of joy within a week from that day. Sadly, I was thousands of miles away in Nigeria and could not be there to hold her hand through the pain, see my own child come into the country, or hear her first cry - it hurt, because I had really wanted to be there for her. But my story is not over. Mere weeks later - about a month, actually - my wife needed to obtain travel papers that would enable her board an airplane with a baby and return home ¬before her visa expired; but such would not be possible if she did not have a letter of consent from the father of the child (ME), plus a copy of the data page of his passport! Aha! There I was now, caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. Everything that could possibly go wrong had gone wrong: I would not be able to see my wife and daughter unless I could join them or they could join me; I could not join them unless I was able to get the passport, which would mean breaking my own principles and sinning against God. and they would not be able to join me for the selfsame reason! I would even have opted to try another state in the country, or restart the entire passport application process again in Abuja, but there wasn't the time to do it anymore with my wife's visa only one or two weeks from expiring. We could not let that happen because then she'd never be able to get another one! To my utter shame and sadness, I returned to the Kwara State NIS office the very day after I got this news from my wife, paid the five thousand naira bribe, and I had the ECOWAS/International passport in my hands in less than three hours. I paid a bribe, Nigeria; and the system was such that there simply was no way I could have done it without paying that price. Today, my daughter is one year old and my wife and I need a passport for her in the next week or two. However, we already know what we are going to meet out there and we don't want to offend God - not again; not this time. Sadly, there simply might be no other way.