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Nigerian embassies of shame (2) By Tunde Odesola
Nigerian embassies of shame (2) By Tunde Odesola
Nigerian Embassies– With a tongue roughly twice the length of its body, and a brocade of dubious colours for skin, the chameleon is the ultimate invisible animal predator.
Without premonition, small creatures like worms and insects searching for daily bread disappear suddenly into the Bermuda Triangle in the belly of the dodgy chameleon via a sticky, snappy tongue.
Like worms and insects, in June 2021 alone, 1,032 Nigerians met sudden death in the hands of gunmen and kidnappers across the country, according to a fresh security report.
Approximately, the 1,032 casualty figure translates to 34.4 wasted lives per day, excluding deaths by sicknesses, auto accidents, extrajudicial killings, ritual killings, etc in a peaceful country in pieces.
Home or abroad, the fate of the average Nigerian is mournful.
Home-based Nigerians are plagued by physical and psychological deaths just like Nigerians abroad are not spared psychological torture and humiliation in Nigerian embassies.
The overwhelming corruption yet pervading most Nigerian embassies despite numberless media reports in the last six years attests to the failure of the retired Major General Muhammadu Buhari led-regime in curbing dishonest dealings that have cemented the green passport in the hall of infamy.
Lamenting the nasty treatment she went through in the hands of officials at the Nigeria High Commission in the UK, a registered nurse, Kemi Samuel, who has lived in England for over three decades, said she suffered Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder whenever she visited the commission.
A registered nurse with more than 30 years under her belt, Samuel recalled that every Nigerian in England, notwithstanding their locations, was required to physically come to obtain visas, renew passports or get new ones.
Samuel explained that it was ridiculous that she renewed her 10-year British passport within two hours at Her Royal Majesty Passport Office, Globe House, London, while she laboured to renew her five-year Nigerian passport after visiting the high commission on seven different occasions.
She said, “If you want your British passport to be done as an emergency, you need to visit the passport office, but if you want to follow the normal process, it will arrive in your mail within four to five days.
“The reverse is the case in the Nigeria High Commission, where officials allow applicants to shunt the queue after bribing them. The officials were nasty to young and old, and they’ve no regard for children, women and the physically challenged. I was breastfeeding my baby and I had to leave my work each time I visited, meaning that I was losing money.
“In 1997, an immigration officer wanted to steal my passport at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos. He hid my passport among the documents he was clutching and he said I didn’t give him my passport, and he was trying to walk away. I raised my voice and told him to bring out my passport from among the papers in his hands.
“In 2010 when I wanted to renew my passport, they said there were no booklets from Abuja, so I had to use my British passport.
“Between February and August of 2016, my daughter and I visited the high commission over 20 times to renew our passports! Nigerians came from other European countries to renew their passports, too.
“There was the pitiable case of a female Nigerian student who needed her passport to renew her studentship. She said that was the 11th time she had come to the commission.
“When we got to Nigeria, the carousel didn’t work as there was no light at the airport, prompting passengers to use the light of the phones. All that was strange to my daughter who suddenly felt pressed to use the toilet. She ran out of the toilet when she saw heaps of maggots.”
A Nigerian resident in Houston, Texas, who doesn’t want his name in print, lamented that he was asked to pay an unreceipted $20 as car park fee at the Nigerian embassy in Atlanta, Georgia.
The 50-year-old applicant, who is from southern Nigeria, said, “The embassy won’t process applications for more than one year, and after the expiration of one year, the applicant will be required to pay a fresh $195 as passport fee. Since it was the embassy that failed to produce passports as and when due, applicants should not be made to pay twice for passports.”
Nicknamed BB, the sad Nigerian also alleged that his online application was changed and ‘sold’ by embassy officials to another applicant who had bribed them.
“I picked up my American passport that can enable me to enter about 200 countries visa-free in my mailbox. I don’t know why my Nigerian passport, which nobody wants to see, is so problematic,” he said.
Complaining about the terrible treatment meted out to visa and passport applicants at the Nigeria High Commission in London, a Nigerian, Sunday John, said applicants were never given appointment when they apply online.
He said, “They won’t give you an appointment when you apply online because they make money by giving appointments to those who have bribed them.
“Passport fee is 75 pounds but they will charge you between 300 and 700 pounds through the backdoor. I refused to pay, and I’ve since not been able to take my wife and three children to see my mum in Nigeria.
“I wanted to open a business account but because I’m not British yet, my nationality was required. The non-issuance of a passport to me has put the business I’m planning to do on hold. I’ve vowed not to bribe them because if I do so, I’ll be encouraging corruption. Sadly, other African nationals in England get their passports in a matter of days.”
Sharing his ordeal, another Nigerian, Mr Frederick Oluwole, who has lived in New York for over 30 years, said passport production at the Nigerian embassy in Manhattan was delayed because of lack of ‘nylon’ covering for passport pages.
Oluwole said, “They took my unsigned money order from me. They didn’t allow me to write my name on it. What they would later do is to write their own name on it and collect the money on the order, and pocket it.
“They talk down on you as if they’re doing you a favour. An official had to fly to Nigeria to bring common ‘nylon’ which could have been sent through courier.”
It’s the same hopeless song in Ottawa where the Nigerian embassy in Canada is located.
Narrating his nightmare, a Nigerian, Valentine Abiodun, disclosed that calls to the embassy were never picked.
“When someone eventually picked my call after weeks of calling, I told him I had been calling the embassy repeatedly, the officer said he travelled. I was shocked, and I told him the embassy wasn’t a private business that should be held up by an official.
“I told him I had sent in my passport for renewal. He told me they’ve not received it. Because I was tracking the passport, I told him who received it at the embassy.
“Then, he said I should call back. When I called back, he said he had seen it, adding that he would stamp and send it to me through mail. I said he shouldn’t. By 2am that night, I got a car and travelled down to Ottawa, getting to the embassy in the morning to pick my passport.”
A young Nigerian living in Mississauga, Ontario, Emmanuel Ogunlade, said he just received his renewed passport, which he had been processing since January 2020, two weeks ago.
Ogunlade said, “It was a terrible experience. I travelled to the Nigerian embassy, Ottawa, a journey of 427km, thrice after uncountable calls that were not answered before my passport was renewed even as I paid $23 twice for prepaid envelopes. They sent an email saying that they’ve sent my passport to me, but it was false. They later admitted they’ve not sent it.”
An anonymous female resident of Dubai said Nigerians now go to Abu Dhabi from Dubai to obtain their passports because of the hardship encountered at the Nigerian embassy in Dubai.
Uhhmm, Nigeria, under Buhari, is rich in corruption, home and abroad.
Sai chameleon!
*Concluded.
Email: tundeodes2003@yahoo.com
Facebook: @tunde odesola
Twitter: @tunde_odesola
TundeOdesola.com
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The Compassionate Pontiff: Pope Francis Dies at 88, Leaving a Mixed Legacy of Hope and Unfinished Reckoning
The Compassionate Pontiff: Pope Francis Dies at 88, Leaving a Mixed Legacy of Hope and Unfinished Reckoning
By George Omagbemi Sylvester
The world stands at a moral crossroads with the passing of Pope Francis at the age of 88, a man widely revered for his humility, humanity, and efforts to reshape the Catholic Church into a vessel of compassion, social justice, and mercy. Yet, even in his death, the shadows of unresolved trauma, rooted in decades of clerical abuse; cling to his papacy, threatening to tarnish a legacy that otherwise radiates light.
Born Jorge Mario Bergoglio in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1936, Pope Francis was the first pope from the Americas and the first Jesuit to ascend the papal throne. His election in 2013 was itself a turning point, a signal that the Church was ready for introspection and reform after decades of bureaucratic rigidity and moral decline. But while Pope Francis redefined the global perception of what a pontiff could be, his inability to decisively eradicate the rot of clerical abuse and Vatican secrecy leaves a bitter footnote to an otherwise progressive era.
A Pope of the People
Francis was, above all, a pastor of the people. He lived in a guesthouse rather than the Apostolic Palace, carried his own bag, and rejected the papal limousine for a modest Ford Focus. His simple lifestyle sent a message louder than a thousand encyclicals, that humility was not merely a virtue to be preached, but one to be lived.
He tackled issues that many in the Vatican’s hierarchy feared to touch. From calling for action on climate change in his landmark encyclical Laudato Si’, to opening doors for the divorced and remarried, and asking “Who am I to judge?” in reference to gay Catholics, Francis sought to shift the Church from a rule-bound institution to a more merciful community of believers.
Former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon once said of Francis: “His voice carries moral authority because it is not political. It is prophetic.” Indeed, Francis saw the world through the eyes of the poor, the refugee, the marginalized. He called the global economic system “an economy that kills” and urged nations to remember “the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor.”
In his 2020 book Let Us Dream, Francis wrote, “This is a moment to dream big, to rethink our priorities… and to choose what matters.” That dream was not just theological, it was social, economic, environmental, and deeply human.
An Incomplete Reckoning
Yet even prophets stumble. While Pope Francis acknowledged the evils of sexual abuse within the Church, his actions often fell short of his rhetoric. He initially defended Chilean Bishop Juan Barros despite widespread allegations of covering up abuse, only to backtrack after international outrage. Though he later defrocked hundreds of priests and convened global bishops for a summit on abuse in 2019, the fundamental structures of secrecy and institutional protection remained largely intact.
Renowned historian Garry Wills once said, “The Catholic Church is the longest-standing authoritarian institution in the Western world.” Despite Francis’ reformist zeal, that institution remained resistant to full transparency.
“There is no greater tyranny,” wrote Montesquieu, “than that which is perpetrated under the shield of law and in the name of justice.” This tyranny lived in the silence of countless victims whose testimonies were long ignored, buried under ecclesiastical bureaucracy.
Even Francis’ own commissions on abuse faltered. Several prominent abuse survivors resigned, citing lack of progress and frustration at the Vatican’s unwillingness to hold bishops accountable. It is a tragic irony that a pope so committed to the poor and oppressed struggled to fully deliver justice to the most grievously wounded among his own flock.
Philosophical and Political Legacy
Despite these failings, Pope Francis reasserted the moral relevance of the Church in an era of rising authoritarianism and nihilism. He condemned populist nationalism, warned against “savage capitalism,” and confronted world leaders on their failure to uphold human dignity.
Barack Obama once called him “a living example of Jesus’ teachings,” and indeed, Francis preached with the urgency of a man who saw the world on fire.
He often quoted Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov: “The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for.” For Francis, that “something” was the dignity of the human person. He reasserted the Church’s opposition to the death penalty, called for the abolition of nuclear weapons, and emphasized that migration is not a crime but a human right.
His encyclical Fratelli Tutti called for a new kind of politics: “A love capable of transcending borders is the basis of what we call social friendship.” In a world fractured by xenophobia and greed, Francis’ voice was often the lone trumpet of compassion echoing across closed borders and barbed wire fences.
Criticism from Within
Not all welcomed this new direction. Traditionalist Catholics saw him as a threat to orthodoxy. Some cardinals openly resisted his reforms, and conservative theologians accused him of creating doctrinal confusion. But Francis seemed unfazed. “Tradition is not the worship of ashes,” he once said, quoting Gustav Mahler, “but the preservation of fire.”
Perhaps it is this fire that will define his legacy. A fire for justice, mercy, and a Church more in tune with the suffering of the world than with the politics of Rome.
The Final Chapter
As news of his death spreads, reactions are flooding in. UN Secretary-General António Guterres praised him as “a tireless advocate for the poor, the vulnerable, and the planet.” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz described him as “a moral compass in a turbulent world.” In the slums of Manila, the plains of Kenya, and the refugee camps of Lebanon, candles are being lit for a pope who saw them not as burdens, but as brothers.
Yet, for the victims of clerical abuse, the candle burns differently, more like a flicker of hope never fully realized.
Francis once said, “Mercy is the very foundation of the Church’s life.” But mercy without justice, as philosopher Cornel West reminds us, is sentimentality. And justice without truth is cruelty.
The Church now faces a difficult road ahead. Will it choose a successor who deepens the reforms Francis began, or one who retreats to the safety of orthodoxy? Will it finally confront its sins not with apologies alone, but with sweeping structural change?
Pope Francis leaves behind a Church more open, more self-aware, but still grappling with its darkest sins. He was the right man for a world gasping for empathy, but not quite the hammer needed to demolish the structures of secrecy that protected predators for decades.
Still, in an era of cynicism, his belief in the power of mercy, inclusion, and human dignity stands tall.
As the philosopher Immanuel Kant once said, “Two things fill the mind with ever increasing awe: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.” Pope Francis reminded a watching world that amid scandal and sorrow, there remains a moral law—and it must always side with the least of these.
He has departed this world, not with the might of a monarch, but with the footprints of a shepherd. Let the next chapter of the Catholic Church be written not just with prayers, but with courage. For that is what Francis hoped for most, not sainthood, but a Church worthy of its founder.
celebrity radar - gossips
Hear what Bishop Wisdom Irabor said about Dr. Chris Okafor… The Generational Prophet of God
…….IT IS WORLD DR CHRIS OKAFOR’S DAY: EIGHT BIRTHDAY NOTES TO THE GENERATIONAL PROPHET:
PLEASE TRY AND READ TO THE END:
HELP ME SAY A WORD OF PRAYERS TO HIM:
1. Happy Birthday to the man who is completely different from everything his enemies told you about him. My relationship with you made me know that, you can become a bad person relating with the person people think is good for you, you can also become a good person relating with the person people think is not good for you. I found God relating with you.
2. Happy birthday to the man whose financial gift to me, in two separate cheques, cleared the first year school fees of my both daughters in private university. The both school fees is about four point three million naira. You made me not to feel the pain of paying the first year for both of them. Apart from you and Pastor David ibiyeomie, No mentor or Senoir man has ever done anything for me.
3. Happy birthday to the man who taught me how to be a father and a friend with my assistant pastors. I came for training with your pastors, and I saw how you bonded with them as a friend and a brother to them, yet they honour and respect you as a father. Only few men can combine these two aspects with a balance. I saw them respect your authority and still confess their secret battles to you for you to help them overcome. Where I came from, you don’t tell anyone your secret battles as a pastor, you will become a public ridicule.
4. Happy birthday to the man who I followed a few weeks ago to see a mentor who came from Abuja for a program in Lagos, and in my presence you wrote a cheque of twenty million naira as a prophet offering to that mentor. Most people don’t know you even have more access to fathers in our family tree, than most of us that were raised in that family.
5. Happy Birthday to the man who practically lives a life of fasting and prayers daily. I came to do a three day training program, and you made me too, to fast and pray with you and the pastors for all three days. At a point, I said to myself, how I wish people know you personally and privately. You are a Christian to the core. I pray for my friends, May you not first meet the enemies of your helper before meeting your helper.
6. Happy birthday to the most quiet blessed man, I have ever seen. Your cathedral is about twenty five thousand seaters, with a crowd of people gathered inside every week, And many surrendering their lives to Christ every service day, you don’t talk about it, the headquarters has so many buildings, offices and event centres, you don’t talk about it, your lekki branch is over 50 plots of land, you don’t brag about it. You have over 400 branches home and abroad, you don’t brag about it. It was in your house last year, when I came for dinner with you, that I saw a brand new Royce Rolls and a brand new bullets proof Land cruiser jeep, that you have never talked about openly. Let’s not talk about your business investment in several sectors of life. The few that I know of. You are blessed, yet very quiet and humble.
Thank you for always allowing me to stay for free, in your ministry 5 star hotel, any time I visit Lagos. I still stayed there last month for free for five days. You save me so much sir.
7. Happy birthday to a prophet who is a balanced teacher and a good preacher. I remember joining your service after one of the training programs I came for. From the beginning to the end, there was no prophecy. I told you after the service, we know you as a prophet, why will you do service and there is no prophecy? You said to me, To have a balanced church, you must know how to combine the word, prayers and prophecies. So that nothing is lacking. Today is a teaching and prayer service. If I call for prophetic service, you won’t know this is the man that just finished teaching.
8. Happy birthday to the man who bought a massive duplex for his Resident Pastor, few minutes drive to his own house in the same estate he lives. They both live in the same estate in lagos. According to him, this man has left all to follow me, if I don’t do this for him, it means unbelievers who do it in the secular world are better than me. On my last visit to lagos, the private driver attached to me showed me the house on our way to see him at home. To confirm what the pastor himself already told me.
Thank you for being there for me and several others.
I love you sincerely and genuinely.
You are my Brother for life.
Happy birthday sir.
Your Bro.
Bishop Irabor Wisdom Robinson.
From all of us at ANSWERS ASSEMBLY WARRI DELTA STATE NIGERIA.
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