The plan by the Ministry of Interior to accelerate the issuance of the Nigerian passport to citizens is laudable only to the extent of it yielding practical results. Similar promises were made by state officials in the past with little to show for it. Yet, prompt issuance of passports to Nigerians who desire it should be the minimum expected of a country where things work. After all, the passport is an essential tool for the preservation of free movement or the fundamental right to personal liberty as enshrined in the Constitution. On that note, the effort and zeal exhibited by the interior ministry to clear the backlog of passports should be encouraged to ensure Nigeria does not return to the ugly past where the international passport is traded as an essential commodity and applicants made to wait for weeks and months to secure the document; whereas the story is different in neighbouring countries and other civilised climes where efficiency is institutionalised.
The Minister of Interior, Dr. Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo assured that a committee has been put in place to work on modalities to reduce bottlenecks associated with procurement of passports. He announced very correctly that issuance of a passport should not be a privilege but a right. According to him, he inherited a backlog of 204,332 passport applications when he assumed office in September and gave a marching order that it be cleared in weeks. He claimed that by this October, the backlog had been cleared.
While the speed of clearance is commendable, the underlying factors that weaken the system over the years must be fully addressed so that the current efforts are not just ad hoc but self-sustaining. Notably, the former minister, Rauf Aregbesola, also attempted to clean the deficiencies that pervaded the system, when he introduced special and dedicated centres where citizens could obtain passports within days. That did not stop the delays. Shortly before he left office in May, Aregbesola admitted that corrupt officials were undermining the efforts of the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) to sanitise and bring integrity to the system. He lamented that the NIS had never experienced shortage of passport booklets as often alleged by some crooked officers. He said it was a lie
Aregbesola had said: “One of the challenges facing NIS as regards passport application is a few corrupt officials who are undermining the efforts of the Service. If people do not tolerate them, they would not exist again. They are the ones spreading the rumour that there are no booklets in order to continue to extort applicants. We did not have a shortage of booklets; we have enough to meet the needs of applicants…”
These crooked officials have not left the system and the place to begin a review of the current visa policy is to identify them and weed them out, if the new minister is to succeed. The artificial scarcity that they engineer from time to time should be eliminated by a process that holds each centre head responsible and accountable for delays. There should be a process of regular feedback from applicants to the office of the minister to enable him to have periodic updates from the centres.
The former minister also confessed that issuing centres are limited by the number of applications they can process in a day, thus making it impossible for all applicants to be cleared; and this results in a backlog over time. The current minister should quickly decentralise the system and work towards allowing each local government headquarter to have a passport centre. A state like Lagos should have far more than the three centres it currently has. Same thing for other states as it is grossly inadequate to have just one centre serving a whole state.
There is an urgent need to improve on electronic processing and payment for passports so that touts who work in cahoots with officials would have no chance of survival. Currently, applicants are billed an extra N5,000 which immigration officials call a compliance fee. The minister has said it is a fraudulent demand and has urged applicants to report erring officers. There should be genuine steps to stamp out corruption and other shameful practice from the system.
More use of electronic processing will also streamline too many hands moving files from one table to another. Such hands can be useful elsewhere. Passport centres should also not be staffed exclusively by officers from a section part of the country; rather, staffing should genuinely reflect federal character as provided for in the country’s extant 1999 constitution. A staff audit of NIS to ensure equitable geo-political representation should help to resolve this anomaly.
Whatever improvements that are enjoyed by citizens at home must be extended to Nigerians all over the world. It is most unfair and primitive to subject Diaspora Nigerians to excruciating stress just to update and pick their passports at our embassies and foreign missions. A Nigerian in Washington DC lamented that he was yet to get his passport after one year of applying for the same. In an engagement with the minister on his verified X handle, the applicant reminded him of the San Diego passport programme of the ministry, which has regrettably stymied one year after monies were paid. Though the minister promised to clear the backlog of applications outside the country, such international embarrassment must be avoided going forward.
On the plan to review the Visa-on-Arrival policy, we support the minister on the call for reciprocity from other countries as supported by international convention and travel protocol. This visa window is on offer for non-ECOWAS travelers and was announced to facilitate business particularly in the tourism sector. But the gains are still not noticeable, and there is strong suspicion that the policy may have been abused. We recommend proper checks and balances in the review to ensure Nigeria benefits, and that countries with which Nigeria have visa-on-arrival agreements reciprocate her good gestures. The NIS should ensure that porous borders all over the country do not jeopardise the policy; and that corrupt immigration officials do not take undue advantage of the loopholes.
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