[ 2014-12-04 ]

Connections to bend the rules
I enjoyed the speech made by the British High
Commissioner last week. There was a colourful
bit of the speech which particularly struck me
with all the shame that His Excellency aimed at
all of us. In trying to illustrate how we
Ghanaians have no respect for structures and
institutions, the High Commissioner recounted the
constant requests for visas with which he is
bombarded.

This is how he put it: “Almost every day,
someone asks me for a visa, …for themselves,
their spouse, child, brother, friend or neighbour
and sometimes for their brother’s friend’s
neighbour.”

“I’m already heartily tired of always saying
the same thing: namely: “That if you comply with
our immigration rules, you’ll get a visa, if you
don’t, you won’t.”

“Knowing me or asking me for what is
euphemistically called a personal meeting to lobby
me won’t make a blind bit of difference; I can
neither impose change nor reverse any visa
decision taken by our visa experts in accordance
with our rules.”

I suspect that all those who know the High
Commissioner and have tried to get visas through
him, on hearing or reading the speech, would say:
“guilty as charged”. However, I am not at all
sure if this very public naming and shaming is
going to buy him any peace so that people no
longer ask for his help in obtaining visas.

There is a word for it in Ghana, Your Excellency
and if you haven’t yet heard it, we call it
CONNECTION. It means shortcut, it means going
through someone to circumvent laid down
procedures. It means using unauthorised and
unconventional methods to get something done.

It means getting something done faster than it
would take through the approved channels. It often
means paying more than the advertised rates for
the service. It also means calling the High
Commissioner to help you obtain a visa in a
shorter period and without providing the catalogue
of documents being requested. It also means
influence peddling and it probably also means
corruption.

I am a great believer in people going through laid
down structures and this is because I believe this
makes life easier for all of us. On the road I
detest drivers who create new lanes to gain an
advantage. This is because I am certain if
everybody stays in the designated lanes we shall
all make a faster journey.

Unfortunately, when the proper procedure is
deliberately cumbersome and designed to frustrate,
the temptation to take the CONNECTION route is
very strong.

I am not one of those who have been harassing the
British High Commissioner for visas; I haven’t
met him and so the opportunity hasn’t come up. I
have known quite a number of his predecessors and
I can say with certainty that I have not asked any
of them for help in obtaining visas. Not for
myself, nor “for my brother’s friend’s
neighbour.”

The humiliation that is involved in the process of
obtaining a visa with a Ghanaian passport is such
that I prefer as few intermediaries as possible. I
am not sure what the current situation is, but I
remember trying to book an appointment for a visa
interview at the American Embassy and every day
for the next four months was solidly booked and
unavailable. In which case if I had a CONNECTION,
should I not use it?

My nephew who is a French citizen came and got
married to a Ghanaian lady here in Accra; we went
through all the processes as meticulously as the
law and custom demanded….. traditional marriage,
under the ordinance at the Registrar General’s,
and a church wedding. Five months into the
struggles to get a visa for my nephew’s bride to
join him, a kind gentleman told us the marriage
under the ordinance should have been conducted at
the French embassy and there would have been no
problems getting the visa for the young lady.

I got a British visa recently; it took me a week
to fill the forms and gather all the documentation
that was required. This is for someone who has
been getting British visas for more than 30 years
and you wonder what happens to virgin applicants.
Did I really have to provide proof I could afford
fish and chips for a week’s visit and answer
questions about all the countries I had visited in
the past 10 years and where my father was born,
when I have already established my nationality?

I quite understand that all of us Ghanaians are
viewed as potential economic migrants who want to
escape from our country and live in the United
Kingdom or any European Union country, the United
States of America or any other country near these
places. Undoubtedly, there are many of us who
belong in this category but there are some who are
happy to live in Ghana and simply want visas to
visit these countries and come back home.
Unfortunately all of us are lumped into the same
group; viewed with suspicion, treated with
contempt and humiliated with abandon.

Is it any wonder that people harass the High
Commissioner in the forlorn hope that they might
get preferential treatment and escape routine
humiliation? There is the added problem that in
spite of our being told incessantly that
CONNECTIONS don’t work at these embassies, we
all get the impression that those who try to play
by the rules are the ones who have to endure the
difficulties and humiliations.

A side story of the now notorious Ruby cocaine
case provides an interesting perspective. We learn
that once the arrest occurred at Heathrow Airport,
one of the two young ladies, said to have
accompanied Ruby, left London the same day and
went to France (she must have a Schengen visa, or
was she also traveling on an Austrian passport?)
and bought a ticket and took a flight to Togo from
France. She obviously complied with the
immigration rules and got visas. Oh, to be able to
have such freedom of movement on a Ghanaian
passport.

A long time ago when I worked for the BBC in
London, we organised a competition which was won
by a 62-year old Nigerian veterinary doctor, who
had a private practice in Benin city. The prize
was a four week trip to London to spend time with
a news magazine. The British High Commission in
Nigeria refused to grant the man a visa. His
earnings from his practice, when converted into
pounds sterling, fell short of convincing the
“visa experts” that he earned enough not to be
tempted to leave his wife and children and
veterinary practice behind in Nigeria and become
an illegal immigrant in the UK.

How I wish the High Commissioner had picked on
anything but the granting of visas as an example
of how their institutions work.

Source - Elizabeth Ohene

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