To submit my documents to reapply, I arrived at TLSContact by 6:45am. At 8am, the security personnel picked only about thirty people on the queue and told the rest of us to return the next day. I was furious as I had travelled from Ibadan, where I live, the day before to make the appointment time. It was that anger that forced my fingers to call out the UK Embassy in Nigeria on Twitter while I was still in line. I got immense support immediately from other people who also shared their visa application experiences. After three hours, I decided I’d had enough and went back to my friend’s house in Lagos where I was staying.

About 2pm, at my friend’s house, I saw the mail from the UK Home Office.

The email read: “Please note that your visa decision has been overturned. Please submit your passport to the Visa Application Centre with a copy of this e-mail. Once we have confirmation that the passports have been received, we will send out a new decision to be endorsed on your passport. Thank you.”

I did as I was told; I got the visa. But none of these four sentences from the UK Home Office acknowledged the indignities of the visa application process.

I spent at least three hours filling the form online and reviewing documents. There were queues at the bank to get account statements. There was time spent sitting on buses travelling from Ibadan to Lagos. I lost a workday waiting in line at TLS Contact, going from one seat to the next like children playing musical chairs. By the end of the day, I slept in Lagos as I could not make the return trip back home. And I did this twice.

This emotional cost is a sunk one: time spent that can never be recovered. How do you pay back for lost time? How does the UK Home Office acknowledge emotional costs when it cannot be seen or measured?

There were financial costs, too, related to paperwork; from bank statement printing, to scanning of all your documents, to transportation to and fro the venue. After 28 days, I got a refund for the second visa fee but to whom shall I send my invoice for these non-receipted miscellaneous fees?

While I waited in line, for my second application, I spoke to some of the people around me. A man from Benin had his visa refused because his inviting organisation did not put their phone number on their letterhead. The previous night, he slept at a church in Lagos as he could not return to Benin and be back early enough to supplement his application.

A mother with three children was travelling for her studies; her eldest child was wondering why he was being pushed around in the queue. Another student had her admission hanging in the balance if she did not get her student visa. I was not alone. We were all bound together, looking into the eye of the British visa god, hoping that our sacrifices would be accepted. Despite our efforts, we had no idea whether our supplications would be a pleasant or offensive offering, an acceptance or a rejection.

I attended the conference and returned to Nigeria, but the toll of my experience remains with me. Those two decisions, to “reject” and “overturn the rejection” came at costs beyond the visa fees. Getting the visa does not invalidate these hidden costs. Perhaps by laying them out in the open, the UK Home Office will be forced to see me as a human being. Will they ever compensate applicants for their indiscriminate decisions?

Further, a visa rejection has permanent consequences for future visa applications to many countries. Like an ex-convict, you forever carry a “rejected” stamp on your head. When asked “have you ever been refused?”, does the “overturn”, as in my case, invalidate the “refusal”?

How do I answer? Yes or no?