Why It Takes Several Months to Renew a Driver’s Licence But Same Day to Get New Sterling Bank Debit Card?

At a 24-hour licensing office in Accra, renewal took minutes. In Nigeria, a driver’s licence can take months—even as banks like Sterling issue debit cards the same day.

The surprise came at 6:45 on a Monday morning. The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority office here, in this bustling suburb of Ghana’s capital, was open and working. Staff moved briskly; a handful of customers waited to be served. When the internet dipped, employees tethered their phones to keep the line moving. Forms were generated in minutes.

The visit had been prompted by a small but costly design error. A Ghanaian driver’s licence carries three expiry dates; only the final one appears prominently on the front, while earlier expiries sit in fine print on the back. A roadside stop—and a fine—made the point painfully clear. “Poor design,” the driver concluded, “and easily fixed.”

Even the fix was folded into the day. After picking up new glasses from Delcielo, the eye test available 24 hours was done on site and the renewal completed in under 15 minutes. What impressed most was not a VIP lane—there wasn’t one—but the ordinariness of it all: Africans in Africa providing excellent, round-the-clock service to other Africans.

The contrast to Nigeria is stark. There, motorists can wait months for a permanent licence, shuttling between desks and return visits, the “temporary” paper becoming a semi-permanent companion. The system promises speed; citizens experience delay.

Meanwhile, banks quietly show what instant can look like. A reader, by way of comparison, described getting debit cards from Sterling and GTB in less than an hour—one could even have been delivered home for under ₦2,000; the other came from a self-service kiosk that printed in seconds. Fees were about ₦1,000 each. By contrast, his driver’s licence renewal took a year and cost roughly ₦20,000 when the exchange rate hovered around ₦700/$.

Sodiq Alabi, a communication expert notes “Things can run like this in our public service if only those in charge can learn a few things from their private sector friends. Took me a year to get my renewed driver’s licence but less than one hour to get my debit cards from Sterling and GTB.

“I Could have had the Sterling one delivered to me at home for less than ₦2k, and the GTB was self-service with card printed in seconds. Both cost around ₦1k, while the driver’s licence that took a year cost me ₦20k or so when naira was like ₦700/$. Some of our people in the public sector are just useless.”

A Design Problem Disguised as a Queue

The Ghana experience begins with a simple lesson: design drives outcomes. If expiry stages hide in tiny type, drivers pay with confusion and fines. Put all expiry data on the front; add email or SMS reminders; reduce the cognitive tax.

Hours matter, too. Adenta’s 24/7 shifts and modular flow—capture, test, print—meet demand where it is. When a link breaks (network, printer), staff switch to workarounds. By contrast, Nigeria’s licensing remains daytime-bound and batch-oriented: a single failure can ripple for weeks.

There is also the accountability gap. On paper, timelines are clear. In practice, citizens are kept in the dark. A modern public service posts centre-by-centre wait times and backlogs, and treats missed timelines as exceptions that trigger fixes—not as burdens for citizens to absorb.

Why do private cards arrive faster? Banks own the journey end-to-end; the state’s process is fragmented. Banks have moved printers to the edge of the network; agencies centralise. Banks instrument their workflows with real-time dashboards; many public counters still operate without live metrics. For the bank, a card not issued is a customer lost. For the citizen, a licence not issued is another stamped temporary.

Five Things Nigeria Could Do Tomorrow

Pilot 24/7 centres in Lagos and Abuja. Staff in shifts. Publish daily dashboards—applications taken, cards printed, average time.

Decentralise printing with controls. Certify state-level print hubs and selected private centres under strict oversight. Log every print to a tamper-evident ledger.

Turn SLAs into money. If the permanent card misses the 60-day promise, auto-extend the temporary and credit the applicant a small fee from a performance pool.

Design for humans. Put all expiry dates on the front; add a QR code for real-time validity; default to reminders 30/14/7 days pre-expiry.

One-stop capture halls. Co-locate testing, payment, and biometrics with parallel stations; measure bottlenecks in real time and fix them in public.

The Cost of Delay

“I hope you don’t think this is a good idea? Imagine the number of informal sector jobs that will be killed—all those young men employed to hang around offices to help those who need government services. We just like to copy foreign things.”

“Friction is what pays expensive British private school fees.”

These reactions capture a hard truth: inefficiency is not merely accidental; it sustains small ecosystems of rent-seeking and informal “helpers.” That does not mean reform should stall. It means reform must absorb useful roles rather than crush livelihoods.

From Touts to Trusted Agents

Certified prep desks. Train and badge independent agents to pre-check documents and book appointments at posted, regulated fees—with receipts and ratings.

Peak-time marshals. Pay crowd managers for surges from a transparent convenience levy, not from bribes.

Digital intermediaries. Encourage “application cafés” that scan, upload, and guide forms for those without connectivity—no back doors, full audit trails.

Modernising service delivery shouldn’t erase jobs; it should professionalise them.

A Culture, Not Just a Policy

The Adenta story—staff hotspotting phones to keep a queue moving—won’t solve every problem. But it signals a culture: get the citizen out the door quickly. That ethos scales when paired with clear card design, hard timelines, and public data.

There is one more tweak the Ghana agency could make immediately: redesign the licence face so all expiry details are visible, and send automated renewal reminders by text or email. The offer stands from the original narrator: happy to help, for free. They’ve also set Google Calendar alerts—for the licence, the car papers, everything with a date. “This should be a product,” they say, half-joking and wholly right.

Public services across Africa can work like this. “I trust that DVLA Ghana will continue to provide this level of service consistently,” the narrator adds, “and that other government agencies will emulate them. I am looking at you Ghana Police. 😂”

The lesson from a 6:45 a.m. renewal in Accra is not that excellence is exotic. It is that excellence is made of small, visible choices—design that prevents fines, shifts that match demand, data that disciplines the line. If Ghana’s DVLA can manage it, Nigeria can meet—or surpass—the same standard. The distance between minutes and months is governance by design.