Your passport dictates how you are treated. But it can be reversed, argues JOSHUA J. OMOJUWA
Take two men and a plane ticket. The first is an American or a Canadian who, some years ago, served time in prison. A convicted felon. Yet if he wakes tomorrow and decides to holiday in Rome, the only thing between him and the trip is a booking website. No embassy asks him to explain himself. No official weighs his worthiness. His passport does the vouching.
The second man is Aliko Dangote, or Abdulsamad Rabiu, or any Nigerian of comparable standing you care to name. Before either of them can even think about that same Roman holiday, the first question is whether a Schengen visa already sits in the Nigerian passport. If it does not, the holiday becomes a project. Weeks must be set aside. A small mountain of documents must be assembled: bank statements, letters of employment or, in their case, proof of empire, hotel reservations, return tickets, insurance, an itinerary, all to persuade a consular officer that these men can be trusted to enter Europe and, above all, to leave it again. Africa’s most accomplished industrialists must audition for a permission a felon from Ohio never has to seek.
I have used Europe as the illustration, but do not mistake the example for the rule. The same wall stands around almost the entire world. Swap Rome for New York, London, Johannesburg, Ottawa, Tokyo or Canberra and the story barely changes. Swap Dangote for a doctor from Dhaka, an engineer from Nairobi, a lawyer from Lima or a teacher from Manila, and it does not change at all. This is not a Nigerian grievance. It is the shared condition of most of the global south, where the citizen of a poor country must negotiate a gauntlet of visas, fees, interviews and suspicion to enter a rich one, while the citizen of a rich country crosses the earth on a booklet and a booking. The irony is that countries of the global south have mimicked these walls against themselves whilst throwing their gates open for those who defined the norm. A double tragedy.
