ON Monday, June 16th, 2025, I drove the 58 kilometers from Abuja to Gwagwalada. My mission was to secure a new Nigerian passport. Those who follow African liberation struggles would have remembered June 16th, as the 49th anniversary of the Soweto Massacre of 1976.
An event that reverberated all over the world, when security forces of the then South African apartheid government gunned down hundreds of demonstrating school children in Soweto and other parts of the country. That massacre of Hector Peterson and his colleagues was going to become a major spark that lit a worldwide movement of solidarity, as well as the intesification of the struggle by the South African liberation movement. But, I have digressed. My mission in the Passport Office was to join the queue along with several other citizens to renew my passport, which expired in 2022!
But the story of the expiration of the passport, along with visas to several destinations around the world, was not because I forgot the expiry dates. No. The passport was seized from me six years ago, at the commencement of the trial that I was put through by the ICPC.
The last time that I travelled out of Nigeria was in October, 2018. I had gone to Rabat in Morocco. I had a couple of other trips lined up for official assignments and personal reasons, to Argentina, United Arab Emirates, South Africa and Switzerland. These were scheduled between the end of 2018 and the middle of 2019.
By this period, the depth of animosity between my supervising minister and I was beginning to reach a head. I did not secure approval for the trips. By that time, we were already a year into the argy-bargy with the ICPC, and by April, 2019, we were arraigned in court. This was after an orchestrated media campaign had been launched earlier, set out to tarnish my image and to create the impression that I had stolen the sum of N2.5Billion from the coffers of the NBC.
Our arraignment in court was equally a rehearsed part of the elaborate charade. Television cameras from the press as well as the prosecuting agency were strategically positioned to record our every movement within and around the court house, just as much as the salacious reportage was central to the orchestrated process of demonization.
But the most important punishment even before the proper commencement of the court process was that by fiat, our passports were seized, along with the submission of other documents, as part of the bail process. Never mind the legal position that declared us innocent until proven guilty! There was no way that I was ever going to imagine that the passport would be under lock and key for the next six years.
One of the greatest pleasures of my life, as well as a source of very deep education about our very intriguing world, has been travel. I used to tell my friends that I carry the genes of movement and of travel as a Fullo. I have also made professional success from writing travelogues from different locations around the world.
I was travelling with the POLISSARIO FRONT in the liberated areas of Western Sahara; I travelled on the two sides of the Civil War in the Ivory Coast, going between Abidjan, Yamousoukro and Bouake in the North; I went to interview President Isaias Afewerki in Asmara, Eritrea; I attended the funeral of John Garang in Juba, in South Sudan.
I similarly travelled extensively in Iraq before the illegal American invasion in 2003, visiting Baghdad, Karbala, Najaf, Samara, and Babylon, before doing a road trip to the oldest continuously inhabited city on earth, Damascus, in Syria, passing through Aleppo.
There were all those remarkable journeys within the African continent, in the Americas, in Europe, and in Asia. Travel enriches our humanity and allows us to understand that there’s no one way of being human. With travel, we also learn to appreciate the fact that there is no superior or inferior human culture. We are different, yes, but equal in our human worth, without doubts!
When my passport was official seized, and we went through the tortuous trial that lasted six years, a very important part of what makes me a very happy, and equally cultured human being, was taken away from me. It was torture that was deeply felt because my citizenship was abridged, and a vital element of being able to connect with humanity was similarly locked away in the vaults of the Nigetian courts. Afterall, we were officially accused individuals undergoing a criminal trial. For six years, I was a witness to the world’s exciting developments only from my home without the possibility of travel.
I made an almost superhuman effort to block off thoughts of my inability to travel. In any case, I didn’t even have a livelihood for six years, having been suspended as DG of the NBC in 2020, and I therefore, didn’t earn the income to purchase a ticket or the foreign currency to do a trip. But a point came when I was requested to do a trip to Cuba, a country that I have always wanted to visit. Unfortunately, my passport, which had expired by the time of the invitation, was still in the possession of the court.
Finally, on February 13th, 2025, the court discharged and acquitted me and my colleagues. The three-point charge against me was dismissed by the Federal High Court. That verdict opened a new and potentially exciting vista. I can begin to repossess my life and earn back all my rights as a citizen of Nigeria and a man of the truly incredible world of the 21st century.
For six years, I was on trial accused of criminal conspiracy, and as a consequence, they seized my passport, thereby abridging my citizenship. When I entered the passport office in Gwagwalada, they snapped my picture, and I did the biometrics. It struck me that I was back on the road to full citizenship.
It has been a very tough journey to arrive at this new point. But I feel that excitement of knowing that I can begin a new engagement with the world and humanity. I have collected a new passport, and the world should be ready for me. I will travel, I will enjoy the scenes of various destinations and I will write about them. So much for a six-year trial, a seized passport, and an abridged citizenship!
- Kawu, PhD, FNGE is a broadcaster, journalist, and a political scientist and can be reached via kawumodibbo@yahoo.com.