When an X user revealed her intolerance for wrongly spelt Igbo names via a viral post on March 7, many Nigerians recalled how misspelt and improperly arranged names had affected them.

Some said that overzealous and ignorant individuals, unaware of certain name variations, had mistakenly misspelt their names, causing them unnecessary troubles.

The X user, known as @theladynaya, wrote: “I’m a simple Igbo woman. Wherever I see Chidinma or Nmesoma, I ensure I make the correction on the document if I have the privilege to. My language will not be misspelt under my watch.”

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‘I WAITED FOR 10 YEARS TO RECTIFY IT’

Elizabeth Peters, a Nigerian based in the UK, told FIJ that an official at the Nigerian High Commission in London omitted her first name while renewing her Nigerian passport as a preteen.

She said the official insisted her name was “too white” and decided to use her middle name, Tolulope.

“I was renewing my Nigerian passport and at the name-writing stage, the official there kept saying my name was ‘too white’ and how he would be referring to me as my middle name. I was a preteen then and didn’t think anything of it. My parents who were there also laughed thinking it was just a joke,” she revealed.

However, when she received her passport, her first name was completely omitted. This led to a 10-year ordeal of explaining the discrepancy during travel.

“My parents immediately raised the alarm, showing them the names we had applied for and that’s when we were told we had to wait for it to expire (10 years), and we’d have to go to the headquarters in Abuja to rectify it. We were so livid,” she said.

“So for 10 years, any time I was travelling to Nigeria from another country, I would have to explain why the names on my two passports were different and assure the airline I was the same person. One time, I got held at the boarding gate in America (where I had been vacationing and didn’t actually have a home in) till the very last minute because of this same situation.”

When Elizabeth eventually had a chance to correct the problem 10 years after the incident, she had to sacrifice a medical school exam, travel to Abuja on short notice and incur additional expenses.

“I was in medical school and we didn’t get holidays, so I had to go to Abuja impromptu and it cost me an exam, which was very painful. Getting to Abuja, I luckily had the assistance of a govt official at the time which made things move fast and I was able to get the new passport on the same day, although at a cost. Also, the flights to and from Abuja alone were an unnecessary expense,” she said.

“Only then could I change my BVN, NIN, bank accounts, etc to finally portray my real name. Of course, some of these required money like I had to pay for newspaper publication, etc. It was a very long process.”

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‘I HAD TO SWEAR AN AFFIDAVIT’

Chinenye, another lady affected in a similar manner, told FIJ that the second ‘n’ in her name was omitted because one of her teachers, at the point of registering her for the West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE), felt it was inconsequential.

“My name is Chinenye which means the God that gives. However, during WAEC, registration one of the teachers in charge insisted that the (N) in my name wasn’t important and the name could be pronounced without it so my WAEC was registered as ‘Chineye,'” she said.

She said when it was time for clearance after gaining admission to the University of Benin (UNIBEN) in 2017, she was not cleared because of the difference in the names on her Joint Admission Matriculation Board (JAMB) result and WAEC certificate.

“I was asked to go and swear an affidavit to that effect. It’s now a part of all my documents. What makes it ridiculous is that we were asked to submit a copy of our birth certificate during WAEC registration and my birth certificate clearly says Chinenye,” she said.

FIJ found several other complaints from Nigerians who had to bear the avoidable cost of rectifying the impacts of name alterations.

An X user, @ChiEzrra, wrote: “Arrogance like this is what got me and my siblings US visa revoked when we went to Canada to renew it. It took us 16 years of living in the US to get citizenship. You all really don’t know the power you have to totally derail someone’s life.”

While recalling her experience, @Pawsh_Jai, another X user, wrote: “I spell my name as Chiwendu, went for NIN nd this lady says it’s Chinwendu. I said leave it like that. Tell me why my slip came out nd it’s “Chinwendu” the hurdles I went through to correct that mistake. The money. Can’t forgive her.”

@DJshapzy, another X user, noted that he stopped using his Ecobank account “because their staff felt they knew my surname better than my father and my grandfather by inserting an unwelcomed alphabet thereby distorting my name”.