THE VISA BROUHAHA...advocating for a visa-free Africa

I’m a Nigerian, an active citizen and a social entrepreneur. I’m ambitious for good success (Holy Bible; Joshua 1:8) and I love to travel.  I was 17 years old when I made my first international trip and it was to the closest African country sharing border with Nigeria; Benin Republic. It was my sister’s convocation ceremony in one of the universities in that country and it was germane that we attended that ceremony because we’ve never gone to visit her since she started her studies four years before.

Prior to the D-day, we had made series of enquiries from friends and family who had visited Benin Republic before and what their experiences were when they travelled. Some of them gave positive reviews while others gave negative reviews. After all said and done, we decided to go witness our part of the story the next day. At dawn of the following day, we set out to travel by road since we couldn’t afford to pay the huge cost of travelling by air. We were three guys on that trip and we were determined to have lots of fun at the convocation ceremony. We dressed in our best outfits and made sure we used a bit of face powder to smoothing our oily faces. After two hours of heated journey from our base, we got to the closest bus stop to the border (Benin/Nigeria border) at 9:00am.

At the closest bus stop to the border, we were cajoled to take motorbikes to the border terminal which was just a stone throw, but didn’t realize until we got to the terminal that it wasn’t worthy of taking bike for. Again, we were told to take motorcycles to cross the border and this can’t be done until we’ve been checked by the immigration officers at the border.  The immigration officers were three in number, standing behind the barricades. They requested for our international passports and visas for them to allow us passage. We looked confused and taken unaware because nobody told us that we would need a visa to visit a neighboring country. We had thought that we would only be requested to submit our international passports and yellow card for perusal. We pleaded with the immigration officers of our ignorance of necessary documents to present during travels like this but they were not in the mode to listen. The most senior immigration officer insisted that we go back to our country if we can’t present a valid visa and also challenged us of coming from a country where orders aren’t strictly followed.

After about an hour of pleading and arguing, the immigration officers requested to be tipped if we really wanted to gain access to the border, or else we would be harassed and moved to the cell. At this point, we were tired and frustrated already. We further pleaded with them not to harass us and allow us pass unharmed. We were extorted but eventually allowed passage. We got to the convocation ceremony all sweaty and worn-out. We managed to smile, eat and celebrate with our only sister who was passing-out of the university because we didn’t want to spoil her day with our sour travel ordeal. We finished at around 6’o clock in the evening and made our way together with our sister back to the border. This time, we were not harassed but that didn’t change the mindset we already have about traveling within the African Continent.

When we got home, we couldn’t stop talking about our ordeal to friends and family who cared to listen. I charged my phone and surfed the internet to read about the required documents needed to travel to another African country and I realized that there are not so much differences with required documents to travel to other continents of the world.

Africa is our continent; let’s make it home for all Africans!

An article written  to advocate for a Visa-free Africa

Written by Akinjise Daniel.