LAST week, the Comptroller General of the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS), Mr. Muhammad Babandede, indicated that the agency was contemplating the idea of issuing multiple standard international passports to high net worth Nigerians who are frequent travellers to facilitate their business trips overseas. Speaking at the Ikoyi passport office in Lagos, the NIS boss said the initiative followed pressure from businessmen and frequent travellers. According to him, the most affected persons were those with passports trapped at embassies and high commissions as they sought to get visas to travel to different countries while having many businesses to attend to at the same time. The issuance of multiple standard international passports would allow such businessmen and high net-worth individuals to attend to different needs without the constraint of possessing a single passport, he added.
The NIS boss however added a caveat, namely that the issuance of such passports would be subjected to rigorous scrutiny, such that only individuals who do not pose security problems and are not involved in narcotic or other nefarious activities would benefit from the scheme. Babandede added that there were over 70,000 uncollected international passports at the NIS offices nationwide, attributing the negative trend to Nigerians declaring their passports missing in order to meet up with visa requirements at some embassies or high commissions, and fraudulent declaration of lost passports, either to escape justice or for “irrational excuses.”
It is indeed a fact that Nigerians of high net worth often experience the inconveniences highlighted by the NIS CG in their bid to attend to various businesses abroad. However, the proposed solution to the problem is fraught with so many potent challenges as to render it completely undesirable. In the first place, how does Babandede hope to define individuals of high net worth? For instance, is a university professor necessarily of high net worth or not? And are the consultants to the various state governments high net worth individuals or not? More fundamentally, why is the NIS considering further reinforcing the social inequalities in the country by creating a special category of Nigerians and placing them over and above others simply because of their perceived social standing?
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