Stakeholders Identify High Demand, Scarcity, Inefficiency as Causes of Delays in Obtaining International Passports

Chinedu Eze

Stakeholders in the aviation industry have identified some key factors affecting the issuance and collection of international passports in Nigeria.

According to them, the challenge in obtaining international passports in Nigeria is fast becoming a perennial one, a development that is also affecting the rate at which many Nigerians struggle to migrate to other parts of the world due to economic hardship in the country.

Senior Immigration officials and some passport applicants, who spoke to THISDAY, listed the factors to include high demand by Nigerians; inability of the Nigeria Immigration Service to provide the documents to meet soaring demand; inefficiency due to dearth of technical personnel in Immigration and delays sometimes caused on purpose to extort money from applicants.

The immediate past spokesman of the Nigeria Immigration Service, Mr. Amos Okpu, had told THISDAY that the process of an applicant obtaining a passport, does not involve any kind of physical financial transaction.

According to Okpu, “Applicants are expected to go online, fill the form and make payment. This is a strong measure to avert any kind of physical cash transaction. It is wrong procedure to go to passport office with cash because you are supposed to go to the passport office with evidence of your payment online. While filling the form online, you choose the office you wish to go, the date that is convenient for you. So, journalists have the obligation to educate Nigerians through their various medium, about the actual process of obtaining a passport without paying physical cash to anybody.”

He added that the only applicants who are extorted are those who refused to follow the process, because the Immigration process is cashless and urged that if anyone requests money from any applicant the applicant should report him or her to Immigration authorities.

This has been the ideals laid out by the Immigration after the reformation few years ago, but this has not solved any problem; rather, it has made matters worse.

THISDAY investigations revealed that in busy places like Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt, it has become very difficult to obtain passports in a matter of months, so those applicants desirous of getting the documents in a matter of weeks resort to travelling to other state capitals where there less pressure and pay extra to obtain the passports.

This illicit process has been going on since the last two years, THISDAY authoritatively learnt.

But an inside source told THISDAY on Wednesday in Lagos that for more than three months there has been scarcity of five years international passport documents and the only ones available are for 10 years. There are the 32-page five-year validity for N25,000; 64-page five- year for N35,000; 64-page 10-year validity for N70,000. The categories of the passport are as follows: 32-page five-year validity (Adults and Minors); 64 page five-year validity (Adults and Minors); 64 page 10-year validity (Adults (18+) only) and 32 Page five-year Official Passport.

“We have stopped shunting and emergency process in obtaining of passport. These processes are being controlled by Abuja to stop extortion of people in the name of emergency.  The problem we have is that there has been consistent short supply for five-year passports for three months and the demand is very high. This is connected to the desire of people to leave Nigeria due to economic hardship. The Nigerian Bureau of Statistics recently gave comprehensive information on the level of poverty in Nigeria.

“Someone very close to me on Monday (November 21) went to VSF office to request for UK visa at their Maryland, Ikeja office. He left my house by 5:45 am and was still there by 6:00 pm. The poverty level is too high so people want to leave. That is key principle in migration, people migrate to areas of better life from that of hardship,” he told THISDAY.

The official also disclosed that in the last three years there were efforts to move away trained and highly skilled Immigration officials from the three passport officers in Lagos, including Festac, Ikeja and Ikoyi and these were replaced by personnel transferred from other states who were not exposed to the training and education on passport processing and this had led to inefficiency and poor delivery of the product to applicants.

“The decision to bring people from some states that do not have the requite skills to processes these passports was a bad decision because those who had the skills were transferred from Lagos and Abuja, where we have the highest demands of passports. Those brought in to replace them did know anything. Some didn’t even have the knowledge of how these booklets are processed. It was a big setback for us and it is not as if things have changed. It is the same thing. The different is that the new management is trying to take those skilled personnel back to where their knowledge can be adequately utilised. As far as we have short of booklets, the delay in the issuance of passports will continue. It is unfortunate but it wasn’t as bad as this in the past,” the official said.

Reacting to the urgency, the Nigeria Immigration Service has been reported to have directed that on Tuesday, Nigerians in Diaspora with expired passport would no longer require visas to visit home, but they must show their expired Nigeria’s passport to ensure they are truly from Nigeria.

The new spokesman of Immigration, Mr. Tony Akuneme, who disclosed this in Abuja, while reacting to inquiries about the new visa policy of the federal government, said Nigerians with dual citizenship don’t need visa to visit home.