This month makes it one year since I began the process of renewing my driving licence in Lagos, and yet I don’t have it; neither does my wife who started the same process of renewal about the same time.
My birthday is in August. And so is my wife’s. So, our driving licences expired in August last year on our birthdays, in line with the Federal Road Safety Corps’ practice of linking the expiry date of one’s licence to one’s birthday to aid one’s remembrance.
Since I had heard that the FRSC had “upgraded and digitalised” the process of renewing the driving licence, I was happy and very hopeful that it would be smoother than the previous renewal that took me about one month to receive a new licence three years ago. So, to the internet I went, landing on FRSC’s website. I updated my details online exactly the way I wanted them to be. I was made to choose the FRSC office of my choice as the point where I would go for the renewal. I chose the office at the old Secretariat of Lagos State in Ikeja. That made me feel cool. In my mind, I thanked the FRSC for “upgrading” itself and joining modernity.
The process involved filling out my payment for the driving licence online and printing it out. I did that and went to a bank with the document to make the payment. The payment made, I proceeded to the old Secretariat. I had assumed that since I was merely renewing my licence, I would drop the details of my payment, get photographed and told when to come for my licence. But no. At the FRSC office, another long process started. I was asked if I wanted it “express” or “normal”, with “express” being the euphemism for paying a bribe to make the process faster. I ignored all that and joined the slow queue.
I was sent to complete the Lagos State process, the VIO process and the FRSC process, including writing a test and being taken to drive. I scaled all the hurdles after a long and slow process. But I did not complain.
I was then given a date to return to the FRSC section where my photograph and signature would be captured by a machine for the licence. I glanced at the paper and saw a date that had “5” and told myself that it was just a matter of weeks. I returned early on the 5th, got number 6 and waited. While discussing with those around me, I heard that they all started the process over three months earlier. I said I was lucky that I started mine about a month before. They asked if I paid any “special fee” (a bribe). I said no. They said I was lucky. And for the first time, I looked closely at the date on my paper and my mouth almost dropped: it was not September 5, but November 5. I was meant to come in another two months, not today! I had never imagined that I would be told to come back in three months in a system that I assumed was “computerised and digitalised.”
Some of those waiting with me told me to go and appeal to the FRSC officials to be allowed to join those who would be attended to that day. I thought of it. I was certain it would not be without someone asking that his palm be greased. There was nothing to hurry about, I told myself. I left for my office.
On November 5, 2012, I came back, but the unpredictable Lagos traffic ensured that I would not get to the FRSC office before 8am. The first 20 people had written down their names. I was number 21. I pleaded with all my stories, but my pleas fell on deaf ears. I left and came back the next day. Interestingly, by the time the seventh person was writing his name on the list, some FRSC officials had arrived. They took the paper into the FRSC office, and by the time it came out, the list had mysteriously grown to 13 names, even though we were still seven people waiting. By the time one other early bird arrived a few minutes later to write down his name, he was the19th on the list. And the list was shortly withdrawn as full for the day.
After a process of lecturing on driving, we were gradually ushered in one after the other, but we had to watch in frustration and annoyance as people who were not part of those on the list emerged from the blues and got attended to before us. Luckily for me, I eventually got a temporary driving licence which was meant to expire on January 6, 2013. I was told to come back by that time to collect the permanent driving licence.
Since the second week of January this year when I first went back to the FRSC office to check, I have been going to the office now and then to check. But every day I leave my work to check, I get the same result: My driving licence was not out. I would be told to check back in two or three weeks’ time.
Meanwhile, my wife, who did hers in the Lagos Island office, has the same tale of licence not ready. One year after, it is the same story for both of us. For a licence that has a three-year lifespan, one year has gone, and there is no hope yet that it will be out any time soon. Sometimes, I wonder if the driving licence will ever come out; if it has not been lost in the system!
It is inexplicable that a travelling passport that has a higher level of security value will take a matter of weeks or days to be obtained, why should a driving licence take more than one year to be processed?
It is even painful that a process that is supposed to have been “upgraded and modernised” is now even more bureaucratic, cumbersome, frustrating and slow, with landmines that ensure that drivers would be scared of the process and thereby pay a bribe to escape those hurdles and time-wasting devices.
As usual, the FRSC would rationalise this as teething problems that should be expected from a new system. But that is inexcusable. Other nations execute new projects. They don’t usually go through this irritating frustration. When a new project is to be introduced in a nation, it is test-run. If there are loopholes, they are rectified at that stage. But once it takes off in earnest, it should run seamlessly, because the citizens would not accept any excuses. If there are disappointments, the citizens that suffer such may even take the agency involved to court. But in Nigeria, we are always told not to complain or be too critical, but to understand, as if our nation is a sub-nation or our people sub-human.
It is sad that at every turn in our national life, any time you want to exhale that something new and good is appearing in the horizon, your hopes are dashed and you are jolted back to reality by the display of mediocrity.
No doubt, Alphonse Karr was not wrong after all when he said that the more things change, the more they remain the same. Especially in Nigeria.
Source: Punch
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