Chukwuebuka Ibeh is a stringer for the New England Review of Books. He is based in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, and writes to us to share his recent interaction with the passport authorities there.
On a rainy Friday morning in August, I sat in a small room on the second floor of the Federal Immigration Service Office in Port Harcourt. I wanted to finally do what I had put off doing for a long time—get a passport. I had earlier been connected to an agent who would help guide me through the process. He was not on site when I arrived, so he instead referred me to a co-worker. I was then asked to wait for a minute, and then for a few minutes, and then for a few hours. Finally, when I was called in to submit my application documents and sit for a brief interview, it was almost evening. When I protested over the long wait, I was told I was lucky to have gotten it done today at all.
When I asked how long it would take to get the passport, I was told three weeks.
I asked, why does it take such a long time?
They were currently out of materials, he said. And when the materials do eventually arrive, the people who paid for express delivery would be attended to first.
I paused. I wanted to point out the absurdity of a government office not having the basic materials needed for its running, and wanted to further point out the irony of express delivery. But I was exhausted from the long wait, and late in getting home home, and three weeks wasn’t so bad. So, I let it go.
I returned to school in Bayelsa—a neighboring state—the next day. Tied up with schoolwork, I forgot about the application, allowing for a full month to pass before I called the agent to find out my pickup date. The materials had still not arrived. His tone was apologetic, but removed. He assured me they would definitely arrive the following week.
I called him back on the Friday of the following week. He picked on the third ring and gave me the news in a somber, almost reluctant, manner: no, the materials had not arrived. Not even the ones for express-delivery. When I asked what could possibly be the cause of the delay, he sighed vaguely.
I lost my patience when I called three weeks later to be greeted yet again with the news of the passport’s non-arrival. I raised my voice, calling out the government’s ineptitude, and even threatening to withdraw my application if care was not taken. (In retrospect, I found this funny—for it was only myself who would stand to lose if a withdrawal was effected) The agent waited until my tirade was over before telling me, in a calm voice, that the situation was hardly his fault, and that if anyone needed to be shouted at, it wasn’t him.
In the second week of October, I commenced exams for the second semester of my penultimate year. Preoccupation with these took my mind off the passport for a while, at least consciously. On a Thursday of the third week of the month, I had reason to briefly visit Port Harcourt, and I called, sensing as I did that some hopeful news awaited me. The agent’s silence after our first hello dispelled this hope.
Instead of asking if the passport had arrived, I asked him if it would ever arrive.
Surely, he said.
When?
Very soon.
Chukwuebuka Ibeh is a staff writer for Brittle Paper, with writing most recently in McSweeney's and on the short list for the Gerald Kraak Prize. Connect with him on Twitter. || Photo by Ashim D’Silva, showing the silhouette of a person at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport; via Unsplash. || Readers may also enjoy the story "At the Airport in Kalai" by Floyd J. Miller, appearing in a 2009 issue of The Charles River Journal; and "Waiting for a Visa" by B.R. Ambedkar, written in 1935 or '36.
