Passport of Privilege, Not Citizenship
In a country where the official minimum wage is N70,000, the Nigeria Immigration Service has done the unthinkable: it now costs more than a month’s salary for the average worker to obtain a mere 32-page passport. Beginning September 1, 2025, (according to the NIS) Nigerians will be expected to cough up N100,000 for the “entry-level” passport and a cool N200,000 if they desire the 64-page, 10-year option.
The absurdity would be laughable if it were not so cruel. A passport is not a luxury in today’s world; it is a right tied to citizenship, a tool for mobility, and for many Nigerians, the only escape hatch from a system that has failed them repeatedly. By pegging the price of a passport above what millions earn in a month, the government is essentially saying: mobility belongs only to the rich.
Let us be plain: this is not reform, it is extortion. What justification can be advanced for a pricing regime that demands more from a mason in Enugu or a teacher in Kano than their entire month’s wage? Is the booklet made of gold? Or is it simply that in Nigeria, even the most basic right; proof of belonging, is now sold at the market rate of desperation?
Consider the bitter irony: a government that is known for health tourism, cannot guarantee stable electricity, functional hospitals, or quality schools now finds it convenient to erect barriers to the one document that allows its citizens to seek those very things abroad. Instead of facilitating the process, it has monetized the escape. The message is clear: unless you are rich, stay put in the sinking ship.
And yet, these same leaders and bureaucrats who impose such policies hold diplomatic passports at no cost to themselves. They do not queue in passport offices. They do not “hustle” for appointments. They do not scrape their pockets to pay for a document that should be a matter of right. No, they glide through immigration counters, red carpet rolled out, while the rest of us are told to sell our kidneys if we wish to breathe foreign air.
This policy is not only insensitive; it is immoral. It entrenches inequality and spits in the face of hardworking Nigerians who only ask for the dignity of being able to prove they belong to the very country that exploits them. If the minimum wage is N70,000, then no government with a conscience should fix the price of a passport at N100,000. That is governance without empathy, and leadership without logic.
In truth, the Nigerian passport has long been mocked abroad, its holders treated with suspicion, denied visas, or herded into separate queues. Now, insult has been added to injury: we are asked to pay a king’s ransom for the privilege of carrying it.
The Nigeria Immigration Service may call this an “upward review.” Nigerians know what it really is: an official mugging, daylight robbery with ink and seal.
Dr. EK Gwuru writes from Nkolo Ikembe.
