New NIS boss raises e-Passport issuance bar through innovation

Adebayo Obajemu

Before now, many Nigerians have had several tales of woes to tell in getting or renewing their international passports. It was as easy as the head of carmel passing through a needle. Even Nigerians abroad lamented how difficult it was visiting the embassies to regularise their travel documents.

In the process of this many people are duped and exploited by unscrupulous Immigration officers and touts. In fact, the passport office became the most lucrative posting in the service, as desperate people did everything within their means to escape the ordeal. As the corruption thrived, service delivery plunged. Such that only that were able and willing to pay for the service received their passport within reasonable time; others took forever.

However, passport processing and issuance has become less cumbersome in the past one year, unlike in the past when it would normally take months to get new passport.

The immediate Comptroller-General of the Nigeria Immigration Service, Muhammed Babandede, in May, 2021 stated that the turnaround time for issuance of passports is now six weeks.

This good news initially filtered out through the service’s Public Relations Officer, Sunday James, in May 15, 2021. The statement quoted Babandede as saying “With effect from June 1, 2021, the Minister of Interior, Rauf Aregbesola, has directed that the issuance of passports to Nigerians will take a period of six weeks during which applicants must resolve their concerns with the passport office and the office must resolve their concerns with applicants.

“If you submit incomplete documentation, you will receive a text message asking you to come and rectify the issues. Immediately you correct your documentation the six weeks start.

“When you apply you wait for six weeks and you will get your passport. If you don’t get it, hold us responsible.

“If any passport officer fails to contact an applicant and the passport is not issued after the stipulated time, disciplinary measures will be taken against that officer.”

On the re-issuance of passports, Babandede added, “Applicants can come for the re-issuance of their passports from June 1, 2021; six months before their passport validity elapses.

“This means that as soon as your passport has reached six months before it expires, you have the right to come for another one.

“We have improved it from three months to six months. This will solve the challenges we have been facing with reissuing passports. Also, the public must know that we no longer take cash here.”

With the exit of Babandede, many had initially thought that the end has come to the innovation and turnaround of the Nigerian Immigration Service, and the former Comptroller General’s bid to make better and more efficient the passport processing and issuance mechanism.

But that was not to be as the Acting Comptroller General, Isah Idris Jere has not only consolidated on the achievements of his predecessor but has also deepened the drive towards further efficiency by injecting new policy direction to ease the process of obtaining new passport or renewing old ones.
Idris Jere’s appointment was confirmed last September after Mohammad Babandede’s tenure expired following his retirement after 36 years. Until his appointment as acting CG, he was deputy comptroller-general in charge of finance and account. Upon his appointment, Jere had taken certain steps to further reposition the service.

Under his watch, the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) said it has introduced a tracking system for the monitoring of statuses of passport applications by applicants. Idris made this known penultimate Saturday during a brief media interaction, adding that the initiative was part of the agency’s efforts toward sustaining transparency and accountability in the passport issuance process.

Mr. Idris stated that since the unveiling of the online appointment system by the agency, the allegations of corruption and harassment against his personnel have drastically come down. He urged Nigerians to always stick to the rules and “stop inducing our officers.”

He averred that: “Like parcels sent through logistic companies or visa applications, we have introduced a tracking system so that people can stay in the comfort of their rooms and know the status of their passport applications.

“You don’t need to offer anyone any kobo. All that you need to do is to log into our website on www.trackimmigration.gov.ng, upload the required details and see an immediate response on the status of your passports.”

According to Mr. Idris, the new initiative is part of the efforts to phase out human interactions, saying the rowdiness and delay in the passport issuance would soon be a thing of the past. In his view, the “most viable method to address the inadequacies and challenges associated with the production process is the use of technology, urging Nigerians to always apply for their passport before its expiration or “only when they need it.”

He assured Nigerians that other measures are being put in place to resolve all the challenges identified with passport application in Nigeria, adding that the challenges currently being experienced are results of combined problems of the coronavirus disease, foreign exchange scarcity, national identity number validation, among others.

He said that aside the tracking system, the agency will also in the next four weeks introduce self-validation of applicants’ NIN available on its portal and that only when such is done will the applicant proceed to pay and book an appointment for capturing.

He said: “We must also note that passports confer on holders the integrity of a nation, therefore the integrity of producing such documents should also not be compromised. So we must verify the authenticity of applicants’ claims before we proceed for production.

“Also, most times, delays are usually caused by the NIN validation problems and what we want to do now will allow individual applicants to, first of all, verify and validate their NIN and only upload validated NIN before they can pay for passports. By doing that, we would have successfully tackled the issue of a delay from other partners which we don’t have control over.”

He also explained that the Service is working on the introduction of an alert system “so that holders of passports can be reminded when it is six months to the expiration of their passports.”

“Like the driver licences, NIS is planning to introduce an alert system as soon as passports have about six months to expire. This is how much we are trying to leverage on technology to ease the stress currently being experienced,” the acting CGI said.

He also talked about the plan to domesticate the production of passports, saying efforts have reached an advanced stage towards achieving that. Mr. Idris said President Muhammadu Buhari has since issued a directive towards achieving that, and that the ongoing process will only continue pending the completion of the domestication project.

“If we eventually do that, we would have opened more job opportunities for Nigerians, improve the national economy by stopping the capital flight, and also enhance the sanctity of our nation. But there is more to it than just the production. The integrity of the system matters a lot and we cannot afford to have a passport that would lose its integrity,” he added.