A Nigerian lady has decried the difficulties and the discrimination she faced travelling abroad with a Nigerian passport.
Alma Asinobi, an avid traveller, lamented in a statement on Tuesday how foreign immigration services discriminate against her and several other Nigerians for holding Nigerian passports.
Lamenting that the Nigerian passport ranks 96th out of 106 in the world, Asinobi mentioned that her passport was tossed aside by the immigration officer in Havina.
She noted that she was not attended to until he was done with other travellers.
“I handed in my passport to the immigration officer in Havana. He looked at it, tossed it aside, and told me to stand aside until they were done with everyone else,” she said.
“I stood there for hours before I was’specially attended to,she added.
Furthermore, she disclosed that during her travels to the Maldives, she was almost stripped naked by the immigration search officers after she showed her Nigerian passport.
“This time in the Maldives, I showed my passport at customs, and they were close to stripping me naked to look for what I didn’t know.
“All the while, people are passing by and looking at you up and down, wondering what drugs you must have been caught with,” she lamented.
Asinobi also complained about being “randomly selected for extra security search upon exit from India, at 3 different checkpoints.”
“Three different checkpoints, same me. Of all the hundreds of other people, How very random indeed.”
Also, she revealed of her ordeal that “there was a policy in Egypt that miraculously changed, and if I didn’t insist on ‘Show me where that policy is or if I miss my flight, I’m going to sue,’ I would have missed my flight.”
She lamented that, because of the delay, she lost her luggage with all her camera gear in it.
Decrying the difficulties of travelling abroad as a Nigerian, she mentioned that “Some countries now have extra visa requirements based on country of birth, so even if you get a new passport, you’re never truly free.”
Speaking of an episode of the discrimination she faced, she adds, “I literally stood there, watching every single person go through until they were done with the entire plane and the whole hall was empty.
“Next thing, they passed my passport around and around, with different rounds of questioning. Embarrassing doesn’t even begin to describe it.”
