Applicants for Nigerian passports have raised alarm over the inability of the electronic passport application system to curb their being extorted across the offices of the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS).
They complained that incidences of bribery have rather been on the rise.
Some passport applicants affected by the reign of corruption at the NIS expressed their plight on Wednesday in Abuja during an anti-corruption radio programme, Public Conscience, produced by the Progressive Impact Organisation for Community Development (PRIMORG).
The lamentation by passport applicants is coming on the heels of a recent investigative report published by the International Centre for Investigative Reporting (ICIR), revealing that the electronic passport application is facing sabotage by corrupt officials.
During the radio programme, many citizens narrated how they met bottlenecks at passport offices while seeking to obtain new Nigerian passports or renew old ones. Most of them said they paid higher than the approved fees to the NIS personnel, or had no choice but to bribe an official to get their passports on time.
A resident of Abuja, Emmanuel David said that he missed out on a scholarship programme abroad because he followed due process in the passport application process, describing his experience as one he did not wish his enemy to go through.
David recalled his experience at the Abuja office, adding that many people like him are frustrated daily.
“Sincerely speaking, thousands, millions of people out there are crying out because of this. So, if you pay online and get to the passport office, they will give you a chair to sit outside. You might sit there from morning to night and return the way you came without anything being done. If you stand up and ask, ‘please, I came for capturing’; the first thing you will hear them ask is ‘which officer is in charge of your passport?’.
“I applied in March 2022. I got my passport in August. I had to pay an extra N25,000 to process it”, David narrated.
An investigative journalist with the ICIR, Nurudeen Akewushola said that Nigerians in their numbers are affected by the scheming of immigration officials who end up extorting them in the long run.
Akewushola stated that the Centre has volumes of extortion reports from Nigerians seeking passports in Abuja, Lagos, Niger, and other states.
“I was able to speak with people who applied in Lagos, in Abuja, and people who were extorted in other passport offices. For the undercover investigation, I went to the NIS headquarters and observed that this is actually happening”.
He stressed that without making the officers perpetrating the corrupt act scapegoats, there would be no change. He knocked the NIS management for doing nothing to prosecute its officials extorting Nigerians despite ICIR publishing the faces of the indicted officers on the investigative report.
“The NIS has not shown true commitment to wanting to tackle this menace. After the investigation, I called the NIS spokesperson and informed him, and he said it was a lie. So, we published the information, and they saw it.
“After that, we invited them to a Twitter space to speak with Nigerians, but they didn’t come. And since we published that report, nothing was said or done, not even a press statement. So, the NIS needs to show true commitment. They need to make scapegoats out of people that are defaulting.
“It’s not too much for the NIS to prosecute these officers”, Akewushola stated.
On her part, the Monitoring and Evaluation Officer at the Centre for Transparency Advocacy, Stephanie Omere called on the Federal Government and immigration authorities to embark on vigorous public sensitisation to curb officials taking advantage of the citizens.
Some Nigerians who called in during the radio programme. One of them, Jacob from Garki, Abuja, said: “I renewed my passport for 10 years and I paid the officer about N95,000. And I feel they should put a tracking for the electronic version so that we can track the position of the passport at every moment; for the duration of production to be seen online”.
Ashedu from Wuse 2, Abuja: “This issue has really gotten deep, and it’s not just for us to excuse a system, but there must be an overhaul of the whole system. If not, it will not work.
“If we want this new system to work, we must set up departments that follow up and make sure that the system is not being jeopardised”.
Solomon from Abuja also stated: “Honestly, what is going on in the immigration office is terrible. My friend that works there told me that I shouldn’t bother with doing online because it would take forever, but I’ll have to pay an officer who fast-track the process for me. And I got my passport within the space of two weeks; but that is not the way to go. If there’s a way to sanitise the system by punishing those officers that make the process not to work, that’s the way to go”.
Public Conscience is a syndicated weekly anti-corruption radio programme with which PRIMORG draws government and citizens’ attention to corruption and integrity issues in Nigeria.
It has the support of the MacArthur Foundation.
Williams Enifo
29 September 2022 at 5:12 pm
If with the attention of the government of the day being drawn to it. Not has and will be done about it.
Senior officials who are in position to take decisive action are in on it.
Those on the lower cadre are their foot soldiers. Take it or leave it.