The Minister of Interior, Rauf Aregbesola, had recently charged the acting Comptroller General of the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS), Idris Isa Jere, to find a lasting solution to the difficulties Nigerians go through in the issuance of passports.
He stressed that President Muhammadu Buhari was concerned about the difficulties Nigerians in diaspora face in obtaining Nigerian passports.
The Nigeria Immigration Service had in 2019 launched an electronic passport application portal to curb corruption and improve the application process for Nigerians, but the process has been sabotaged by corrupt officials of the service who continue to extort applicants for passports and frustrate those who fail to pay bribes.
The agency was recently faced with backlash on the social media, over issuance of International Passports.
While some claim Immigration staff are into passport racketeering, others are spreading the information that NIS is hoarding booklets.
The Payment Hiking
The Quest Times in an undercover investigation reveals how the electronic application process does not stop bribe-taking at Nigeria’s passport offices.
The Quest Times investigation revealed that passport applicants are made to ‘unofficially’ pay at least N45,000 to N170,000 to officials in order to reduce the waiting period.
Our correspondent who visited the NIS headquarters in Abuja, discovered that for easy processing of passport, called ‘express,’ an applicant is required to pay as high as N170,000.
“The required money for international passport is 50,000 and you will get it in six weeks. But if you want it processed in two weeks you will have to pay N170,000,” a female officer who attended to our correspondent said.
Meanwhile, the official cost of obtaining a passport as contained in the Agency’s website is N25,000 (32-page5-year standard passport), N35,000 (64-page5-page standard passport), N70,000 (10-year standard passport for Adult only).
“This is my first time applying for passport, I did it in Ogun State. I was asked to pay N50,000 but I begged them for 45,000 thousand Naira,” Kunle told The Quest Times.
Another applicant in Ekiti State said he paid 50,000 Naira to get his own in Ado Ekiti.
Online Registration
The Minister of Interior, Rauf Aregbesola, had on March 2022, warned that any passport applicant who paid money to any Immigration officer for the issuance of passport would be charged with bribery and inducement.
Aregbesola gave the warning at the unveiling of the enhanced e-Passport facility and inauguration of the passport production centre at the Enugu Passport Office.
He advised prospective applicants to henceforth make payments for the various categories of passport they desired online and process their applications via the passport portal at passport.immigration.gov.ng.
The minister, who regretted some of the challenges and irregularities Nigerians were passing through to procure their passports, explained that the online application system “is designed to eliminate personal contact, other than for biometric purposes.”
Meanwhile, some applicants said they lack trust in anything online in Nigeria because of internet fraudsters.
While some others said processing their applications via the agency passport portal takes longer time before they are been attended to, after completing the process online.
The story of a 28-year-old David Emmanuel, an indigene of Akwa Ibom state, recently dominated the media space after he secured a scholarship to study in Hungary but lost the scholarship because he could not renew his passport before the deadline.
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David applied in March and paid a sum of N26,000 through the website of the Nigeria Immigration Service and was asked to come for biometric enrollment in April. After the biometric, he was told to come back in three weeks.
He came back on the scheduled date, hoping that his passport had been processed, but the response they gave him was that they couldn’t find his information on their portal. He was then told to come back after another two weeks.
“When I came back, they checked and checked, they said ‘status unknown’, they said I should check after another two weeks,” David said.
“I came back after two weeks, they still asked who was the officer in charge of my file. They said I should go and meet the officer in charge of my file and I said there’s no one in charge of my file. They said I should come back again in two weeks. I said what is happening? What is going on?
“I came back again after another two weeks. That’s like two months then. I now went to SERVICOM. They said let’s check the file. They searched and searched and they also asked who is the officer in charge of my file. I said why is it that they kept asking who is the officer in charge of my file. Why don’t you people state in the online requirement that applicants would be attached to an officer who is supposed to handle each person’s file? Why is it that it’s now when somebody now comes that they will be asking who is the officer in charge of your file? It’s kind of absurd.”
David didn’t know that the reason why they kept sending him back and forth was because he didn’t bribe NIS officials who would in turn help him to follow up with his file. But he later met an officer who explained to him how it works.
The officer advised him to reopen another file with N10,000. After then, the officer later told him that the officers producing the passport needed to be bribed with another N10,000 to get a booklet. That was how he ended up paying N20,000.
“Yet with the extra N20,000 that I paid, it took me 5 months to get the passport.”
Delivery Fees Contained In The Payment
The Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) on Thursday said that it has 140,000 uncollected international passports in the 36 states, including FCT.
The NIS spokesperson, Mr Tony Akuneme, disclosed this in a statement in Abuja, noting that the Comptroller-General, Mr Isa Jere, had dispatched Assistant Comptrollers General to the various zones to ensure that all uncollected passports were distributed to their owners.
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“Nigerians are equally urged to go to the passport offices where they applied for passports and check,” he said.
Akuneme further advised passport applicants to refrain from going through third parties to ensure the timely processing of their applications.
Some Nigerians however queried the agency for not sending the passport to the various applicants as contained in the fees paid.
An insider who confirmed to The Quest Times that the delivery fees is part of the payment made, said they don’t know what the fees is been used for, since deliveries are not been made.
“Before now it used to be delivered when you applied for passport but everything has changed. I can’t categorically tell you what the money is been used for, where its going to, since there is no more delivery,” he said.
The NIS spokesperson, Mr Tony Akuneme who spoke with The Quest Times, noted that the delivery fees is not made compulsory but optional.
“The delivery fees is optional, you can skip it, if you are not interested,” he said.