Review New Passport Policy
This is a call to President Bola Tinubu to wade into what maybe the ill-advised and ill-timed Passport automation process recently introduced by the embattled Minister of Interior, Dr. Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo.
Passport applicants across the length and breadth of the country especially Nigerians in Diaspora who returned for the Yuletide and who paid cursory visit to some selected passport offices in different geopolitical zones revealed thousands of Nigerians stranded as the new system foisted on the service has made the process worse and indeed unfriendly to applicants.
In the three passport offices in Lagos, namely Ikoyi, Ikeja and Festac, applicants were seen running from pillar to post, trying to make their payments online and upload their photos and documents online by themselves as the new system made it impossible for applicants to be helped by the immigration officers.
In the Abuja HQ and Gwagwalada offices, some immigration officers spoken to said that although they welcomed any innovation to make passport process less tedious and seamless, some aspects of the technological development were counter-productive. For instance, asking applicants to upload ICAO standard photos without breaking down. What exactly are the specifications of the ICAO for passport photographs?
Someone should help us ask the minister the meaning of ICAO, and not to talk of knowing its standards for passport applications.
The immigration staff expressed regret that such a good idea from the minister was only introduced to the officers for one week before it came on stream and so left them helpless as they couldn’t even guide the applicants who equally appeared frustrated because most of them had no access to scanners and devices to upload their birth certificates, state of origin certificates, NIN and ICAO standard passport photos.
Some Diaspora applicants who went to the Enugu and Owerri passport offices, the officials told them they only recorded two or three applicants per day as against 50 to 60 applicants per day prior to the new automated system. Nobody was able to achieve the desired results in uploading all the required information especially photos.
So is the government really putting them into consideration before starting this new system, knowing that most of us who returned to be part of the Yuletide, usually had less than two weeks to return to our base?
They queried the reason for the rush to introduce a novel idea when half of the passport centers had less than four hours of steady power supply a day.
Also the minister now made it mandatory for all adults seeking for passport to obtain the 10-year booklet which costs about 85k. Hitherto, citizens had the option of either the five- year validity booklet which cost 35k or the 10-year option for 80k.
A particular applicant in Gwagwalada asked that what if someone genuinely and urgently needed a passport but came from a poor home? Like a winner of a scholarship program?
Ugochukwu Unwegbulam, Ontario, Canada
