This post is one in a Series. A list of all of the posts in this Series can be accessed here.
You paid for your passport renewal on the Immigration Service website?
Yes, yes I did.
Why?? Why did you pay on the website?
In other words:
Don’t you know the website is just for show? It is not supposed to be used as an actual website. A domain was purchased and some webpages were uploaded. Money exchanged hands, as payment for the “technical expertise” involved. All so it could be said that the National Immigration Service of the nation of Nigeria, has a website.
BUT YOU ARE NOT EXPECTED TO USE THE WEBSITE FOR ANYTHINGG!!!!
IF YOU WANT TO GET ANYTHING DONE, COME TO THE OFFICE PHYSICALLY!!!
Alright, alright. My bad. I’m very sorry. I didn’t know that. This is definitely a Nigerian thing I’m freshly becoming aware of. Government websites are just for show. Do not use them for anything. Most importantly do not make any payments on them. If you want to get anything done, go to the physical office. Okay thank you. Thank you very much.
I am walking by the Ikoyi branch of the Nigerian Passport Office. I hiss as some annoyance at a recent experience with the Passport Office resurges. I paid for a passport renewal on the website. That was earlier in the year, before the pandemic. It has been a considerable number of months since then. No new passport. No refund. Just a profuse slathering with thick layers of frustration whenever I visit the offices. Guess who is never again apportioning any significant regard to the technical expertise of a certain country’s government agencies, other things being equal.
We were just let through another roadblock. Soldiers decided to be lenient. There’s yet another one ahead. Soldier said we would not be allowed entry back in our initial direction if the roadblock ahead proved impervious to our progress-oriented intentions. And so right now we exist in the gap between two roadblocks.
The next roadblock is right next to a prison. I heard some prisoners were set free by #EndSars protesters. Police is trying to recapture them, something like that. I do not know if the story is true, but there’s a lot of commotion up ahead. Loud voices and oscillating bodies and belligerent gunshots up in the air. It actually does look like a scene involving escaped prisoners.
Walking beside me, is this guy. We began talking after the most recent roadblock. He works as a gardener somewhere on Banana Island. He’s headed back to his home in Obalende after a day’s work. We think about what to do, and how to approach the situation ahead.
The soldier back there said there’s no coming back. These soldiers up ahead look disconcertingly bellicose. What do we do?
We keep thinking. As we think and talk, we drift closer to the soldiers up ahead.
We are getting closer. We have a very unnerving scene up ahead. I can see about twenty bodies undergoing frog jumps.
What is happening? Why are they frog jumping?
More gunshots.
Oh God.
At some point we are close enough to be within the field of vision of one of the soldiers.
HEY!! YOU!!! TWO OF YOU!!!! COME HEREEE!!!!!
Alas. We have just trespassed the event horizon of this military black hole. Now our physical bodies are being choicelessly drawn towards the menacing beings that constitute this pernicious collapsed star.
Spacetime is now curved, and our physical bodies have no choice but to slide down this curvature and into the gaping chasm of military defilement that awaits us.
Ah! We are done for.
A soldier bellows:
OYA!! FROG JUMP!!! FROG JUMP FROG JUMP!!!!!!
Up and down. Up and down. We join the frog-jumping bodies which were alarming me from a distance a while back.
Now we are right in front of the soldiers. Gunshots keep ringing.
WHERE UNA DEY GO??? WETIN UNA DEY DO FOR HERE??? UNA NO KNOW SAY CURFEW DEYY????
We try to explain. There are two people behind us- male and female. I think they are siblings. One of the soldiers has a bright green rubber pipe in his hand. I think its one of the types used to lay underground cables. He hits the male sibling across the torso with the pipe. I think his frog-jump was unsatisfactory.
We are asked some more questions. And some more.
At some point the soldiers decide to let us through.
OYA!! FROG JUMP!!! FROG JUMP FROG JUMP!!!!!!
We keep frog-jumping. We keep frog-jumping till they’re out of sight.
Obalende bus stop.
Image: Obalende.
This post is one in a Series. A list of all of the posts in this Series can be accessed here.
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