By Babs Oyetoro, Seyi Odewale, and David Lawani
Minister of Interior, Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo’s good intention to reform the entire parastatals under his purview including the Nigeria Immigration Service may end up as a mirage without diligently following through with his policy of reformation.
There are widespread allegations that officials of the NIS within and outside Nigeria are enmeshed in deep-rooted sharp practices, fleecing Nigerians who are either trying to secure their international passports or renewing the travel document, through proxies.
The Nigerian international passport comes in two variants. The 32-page document comes with a validity of five years and the 64-page alternative lasts for between five and 10 years. While the official cost of the 32-page document is put at N25,000, depending on the age of the applicant, the 64-page document for 10 years costs N80,000.
In the NIS offices in foreign missions, the 32 and 64-page document costs between €77 and €140 for children and adults in Europe, while in the United States, the 64 pages, valid for 10 years is $230 and the same number of pages valid for five years is $150, while the 32 pages valid for five years is $130.
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But applicants in Nigeria have complained of paying between N100,000 and N150,000 to secure the 32-page, while the 64-page passport attracts an extra fee of nearly N250,000 in some cases through Immigration officials’ proxies. In Europe and the US, among other nations, applicants pay between €300 and €1000 or $250 and above as bribes to get their passport ready within a short period.
Distraught Nigerians complained that they go through hell obtaining this official document necessary to formalise their trips outside the country.
ThisNigeria put together the devastating experiences of different Nigerians who had applied for international passports at different times at issuing centres both at home and abroad.
Every applicant’s story corroborates each other- it is corruption at its apogee at different issuing centres all over.
The big question is: How will Tunji-Ojo tackle the hydra-headed monster in the house that has constituted a clog in the wheel of progress in this sector?
*Nigerians abroad pay $400, €1200 as bribes to secure passports in Italy, the US, Germany, and other countries.
An Italian-based Nigerian, Don Iyobor, said he stopped going to the Nigerian Embassy in Rome, Italy as a result of the negative experience he encountered there.
According to Iyobor, who said he had to part with €1200 as a bribe to secure passports for his wife and children when you pay just the official cost alone, an applicant will have to wait for one or two years before the passport will be ready.
He said, “As a result of the ugly treatment I received at the Nigerian Embassy, I prefer coming to Nigeria to renew my passport. What we have here is what you can call outright fraud by immigration officials. The Immigration officials at the Embassy in Rome do not have regard for Nigerians at all.
“I paid €1200 as an inducement to renew the passports of my wife and three kids in Rome, Italy. When you pay the official cost, you can wait forever to get your passport, they will tell you there is no booklet, but when you bribe money through someone they will direct you to their consultant, and within one week your passport will be ready.
“Sometimes it takes one or two years for your passport to be ready if you go through the official route. The Nigerian Immigration Service officials in Europe are something else. I can never go to the Nigeria Embassy in Rome to renew my passport again.”
Another Nigerian, Jeff, who is a resident of Berlin, Germany, also shared a similar experience.
He said, “What we experience in the office of the Nigeria Immigration Service in Berlin, Germany, is not different from that of the other parts of Europe. I do not want to talk about it because I believe the Nigerian authorities are aware of what is going on but they chose not to do anything about it.
“We are treated like a ‘nobody’ when it comes to Embassy-related matters here. If you have issues here in Germany and you run to the embassy for a solution, you will never get it because they will compound your problems.
“Renewing passports here is problematic. We often pay extra charges of €400 to get our passport renewed. The annoying thing is that Immigration officials will make you pay this through a consultant.
“If you fail to pay these unofficial charges, you will not get your passport in nearly two years. This is different from what we see other countries do. Their citizens do not go through these frustrating experiences in trying to secure their passports.”
Similarly, Sebastian, a Nigerian resident in New York, US corroborated the story of Jeff through his narration too.
Like Jeff, the New York-based Sebastian declined to give their surnames.
According to Sebastian, “It is like climbing a mountain when it comes to getting our international passport if you live in the diaspora, it is a very horrific experience for most of us who live abroad.
“It is interesting to know that the official fee for a 10-year 64-page passport here at the Embassy in New York is $240 but it does not end there.
“You could get captured today by the Immigration and wait for another year or more to receive your renewed passport. They will normally tell you that there is no booklet, but when you pay an additional $250 or $300 through a third party they will direct you to, your passport will be ready in one or two weeks.
“Where did the booklet come from? Because of the nasty experience here, I have programmed myself to renew my passport in Nigeria whenever I go home towards the expiration of the passport and I pay N100,000 to get it renewed in Nigeria”.
*In Lagos, Abeokuta, applicants allege payment of kickbacks via consultants
An Abeokuta resident in Ogun State, who identified herself as Blessing, gave a graphic detail of her frustrations in her quest to secure a passport.
According to her, the so-called bottlenecks and inherent maleficence that pervaded the immigration service made her miss a trip to Brazil recently.
She said, “Sometime in April, I got some news from my husband’s relative, who resides in Brazil that he would be coming home around July-August this year for the annual Isese festival and would wish to take me along with his family when he would be going back. My husband, being an Egba high chief, is always involved in the celebration.
“So, I began in earnest to renew my expired passport, which ordinarily should not have stressed me. The first hurdle I faced was that there was a long list of applicants, whose picture and biometrics had not been captured and that I might not be considered in the next four to six months.
“The second was that even if I was fast-tracked, there was this challenge of the booklet that is the booklet of the document, which they said was scarce both in Ogun and Lagos states. And the only option was that I would have to travel to some north central states, particularly Niger State, to do my biometrics and go again to pick my passport, which could be ready in a matter of days.”
This, according to Blessing, was not without some extraneous expenses. She was to pay triple the amount of what she would have officially paid. For a 64-page passport with a 10-year validity, the price is N70,000, while the same number of pages, but for a five-year duration goes for N32,000.
However, how much one pays unofficially depends on a few factors, which include location, connection, and the urgency of the document. In Blessing’s case, all these factors affected her. Her location, Abeokuta, at the time of her application, had no means of meeting her needs.
She was also not ‘connected’ as it were, to anybody, meaning she had nobody to help her fast-track the process and she needed the document urgently to make her impending trip.
She said, “The amount involved could make me start a small petty trading. Honestly, doing a mental calculation, I asked myself if it was worth the risk after all. The only option I had then was to travel to Minna in Niger State, which would be a night trip to get there early in the morning.
“Considering the unsafe nature of the roads, it was a no for me. Also, the transport fare to Minna to and from, and the N70,000 I was being asked to bring along for a 32-page document with other miscellaneous spending, got me discouraged.
“All summed up, I was going to spend almost N200,000, and that excluded when I would go and pick it up, which could have added the total sum to about N260,000. I had no choice but to give up and wait till next year when my husband’s relative would come again for the festival as he always does. Unfortunately, he had to go as he was running out of time.”
For Adewale Bukola, Blessing’s story corroborated his experience. He was to go on a sponsored trip to China, but the NIS truncated his trip. How?
Adewale said, “The trip was an all-expense paid trip and I looked forward to it, but my passport was not valid. So, I had to apply for a renewal and get a date for capturing, but unfortunately, the trip would have been made before I could be captured.
“When I explained the urgent nature of my application, I was asked if I could go to Niger State where I could get it seamlessly and within 24 hours. But it would be suicidal for me to go there, more so, travelling at night. So, I had to give up a life-changing trip. Too bad, I’ve still not recovered from that.”
A discreet trip to the passport office, at Alagbon, Ikoyi, Ikeja, in Lagos, and Oke-Imosan, Abeokuta, Ogun State, gave a clearer picture of the goings on in some NIS offices across the land.
The array of vehicles parked along the Obalende-Ikoyi Cemetery Road, leading to the old Federal Secretariat, from Monday to Friday readily gives one an inkling of what is likely to happen in that axis, to put it mildly, chaotic.
Street urchins, otherwise known as ‘Area Boys’, are obviously in charge of arranging the cars brought by those who come to the immigration office. Of course, it goes with some charges.
Also, one needs to get there early enough as some of these urchins, acting as touts, sell slots to anyone who wants to be attended to early. How much to pay depends on one’s ability to bargain and the financial standing.
Coming to the requirements for securing a passport, some applicants do not want to go through the ‘rigors’ of producing all the needed requirements, hence, they patronise some touts loitering around, who in cohort with some officials, try to by-pass the diligent route of documentation.
For instance, some of the requirements include a local government letter of identification; birth certificate/age declaration; two recent colour passport photographs; guarantor’s form sworn to before a Commissioner of Oaths / Magistrate / High Court Judge; parents’ letter of consent for minors under 16 years; marriage certificate where applicable, and police report in case of lost passport. All these are needed for a standard passport.
But for an official passport for those working for the government, one will need a letter of introduction from appropriate state governments, Federal Government, Ministry /organisation; marriage certificate where applicable; police report in case of lost passport, and letter of appointment / last promotion. Added to these is that one must make payment online.
All these to most Nigerians are too strenuous and rigorous a route to take. Hence, they approach touts, who are in cohort with some staffers of the Immigration Service.
At the Ikeja office, the almost crowded reception lobby gives an eerie feeling of what would happen inside. An applicant, who gave his name as Charles, said he was there for picture capturing and biometrics.
According to him, getting the appointment after he had paid the required fee online, was like a camel passing through the eye of a needle, adding that he avoided the so-called fast-tracking through touts and some corrupt officials to make payments, hence a longer appointment day.
However, Charles told the story of a friend, who works in the media and how he was expressly attended to. “I have a childhood friend, who works in one of the media houses in Lagos, and how he was able to get his passport in a matter of days. This is because he is a media guy, and the officials were afraid that he could expose them. They had to attend to him expressly,” he said.
He continued, “Although my friend said he went there, having put a call through to a senior official, who facilitated the speeding up of the process. “Immediately my guy got here, in this Ikeja office, he was asked to see their public relations officer, who took care of all the ‘rigors’ my guy would have gone through. He told me he did his picture capturing and biometrics that day and was told to come back in two days to pick up his passport. He said he did not pay more than the required money.”
But not all can have their way like Charles’ friend. Collecting these passports appeared to be another seemingly insurmountable hurdle some Nigerians are facing.
Going by the Minister’s estimation, out of the 204,322 backlog of passports already processed and cleared only a little more than a quarter of them have so far been collected.
Some applicants, investigation showed, have jettisoned returning to the passport offices to again, face the problem of collecting their passports. “And to make matters worse, even when you go, some corrupt elements among these immigration guys would not give you for free, they would want you to tip them for helping to look for your passport. This is appalling,” Charles said.
*Minister’s reaction
Regrettably, Hon Tunji-Ojo admitted these disturbing issues, saying they are systemic. According to Tunji-Ojo, it could only be forestalled if Nigerians refused to give bribes and decided to go the normal route.
“I addressed a press conference earlier in the day, and I said do not give money to anybody. Immediately, there were issues with the activation process of the passport, of course, some people tried to take advantage of that. But as of today, that has been sorted out,” the minister said on a television programme recently.
According to him, the passport office at Alausa, Ikeja had 37,900 backlogs of passports cleared out of the 204, 322 done nationwide. And only 9,000 of them have so far been collected.
He, however, talked about the reforms that would be done in no distant future to make passport enrolment and collection a smooth experience.
*NIS denies involvement of officers in sharp practices, commences probe into complaints
When contacted, the NIS Public Relations Officer, Dotun Aridegbe, said it is not true that immigration diplomatic attaché in foreign missions were involved in sharp practices.
He warned that Nigerians in the diaspora seeking to renew their passports had been warned from dealing with third parties.
When told that the immigration attachés were the ones directing the diaspora passport applicants to the third parties, using them as covers to extort Nigerians, Aridegbe expressed doubts over the claims.
However, in a statement issued on Saturday by the Comptroller-General of the NIS, Mrs Caroline Adepoju, the service has ordered an investigation into multiple complaints levelled against some of its officers over “noncompliance with ministerial directives on timeline passport administration.”
Adepoju, who expressed deep concerns over complaints of misconduct levelled against the service’s personnel in some passport offices nationwide, disclosed appropriate phone numbers for Nigerians to report any form of misconduct by any personnel for appropriate sanctions.
The statement titled: Alleged unprofessional conduct at passport offices, was issued on behalf of the NIS Comptroller-General by the Service’s Public Relations Officer, Aridegbe.
Aridegbe noted that “the Comptroller General has ordered an investigation into the matter, especially in regards to the noncompliance with Ministerial directives on the timeline of passport administration.”
She assured citizens that “The Service has, daily, monitored the compliance level at all passport offices nationwide and at our missions abroad.
“We receive daily reports on production and issuance of Passports from all Passport Control Officers. As of today, Friday, October 13, 2023, most of our passport offices are producing passports of applicants enrolled on Wednesday, October 11, 2023.”
Nonetheless, the immigration chief appealed to citizens to be patient, given that the re-issuance of lost Passport and change of data takes longer to process due to security clearance.
“The Service wishes to use this opportunity to enlighten the general public that applications for re-issuance of lost Passport and change of data take a longer time.
“Some applicants in this category may put the Service in a bad light when they complain of delay and noncompliance with the new timeline. These applications are required to go through security clearance and correspondence with Service Headquarters before approval for production,” Adepoju explained.
