I got one of my greatest shocks about this Jápa Syndrome at the United States Embassy in Abuja. I went for my interview in June 2023. The first thing I noticed was the crowd of people in front of the gate, with laptops, printers, scanners, and cameras. Their prayer is that you would have forgotten to print one of the required documents. They would print a page for the sum of ₦10,000 and print four passport photographs for around ₦6,000, which is ridiculously expensive. Most of the people I saw that day were between the ages of 20 and 35, and I should acknowledge that the majority were from Southern Nigeria. At one of the checkpoints, a lady treated us as if she was doing us a favour by allowing us in, the same way you would treat children getting screened for a common entrance examination. If she found a flaw in your documents, she would start shouting at you or ask ridiculous questions. This is, of course, because the officers were aware of people’s desperation to travel. I read one report that said more than 150,000 Nigerians applied for US visas in 2023 alone. That is a huge number. As I waited to be interviewed, I saw another manifestation of this desperation. Anyone who got their visa approved usually came out of that room, shouting, jumping and jubilating. That was the normal trend, except for very few people. Yet, there were others who got their application denied, and those people, many of them — and I mean many — came out crying like babies, as if they had just been denied entrance into paradise. I wondered: why should someone be so excited that they are leaving their country or be so terrified and traumatised because they are asked to stay?
As narrated by: UMAR (CHICAGO, US)
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