The Minister of Interior, Dr Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, since his appointment in 2023, has displayed the kind of enthusiasm that could lead to positive reforms and innovations at the agencies under his ministry, especially the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS). Not just his enthusiasm, but also his pledges give hope to the Nigerian public that better days have arrived at the ministry. One of such promises relates to the speed at which the Nigerian International Passport would be processed at the NIS offices in Nigeria and abroad.
In February last year, Tunji-Ojo made the following promise: “Effective from March 8, 2024, Nigerians will benefit from a contactless passport application process, reducing the time required to complete the entire process to a maximum of seven to 10 minutes. This monumental reform is part of the overarching efforts to modernise the Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS) and enhance service delivery to citizens.”
Ten months after he made the promise, Tunji-Ojo’s contactless process did not happen. In December 2024, the minister was reported to have given a new date of January 2025 for the commencement of the ‘contactless’ process of issuing international passports. It is not clear if the NIS has the technology and expertise to deliver on this promise, as the idea of contactless presupposes that applicants should snap their passport photographs on smartphones or on other digital devices and upload them on the NIS portal as part of the documentation process. If this technology has been acquired, it is yet to be integrated into the system for processing international passports.
Few positive changes have taken place at the agency, however. The NIS has implemented the online booking and payment processes in the chain of activities that would lead to the issuance of international passports. This is because the application process has been fully digitalised, reducing the number of papers and files needed for processing and archiving documents submitted by applicants. There is also the reduction of crowds at the data capture centre as a result of the fact that applicants can only appear for data capture based on appointment. Though this has reduced the rowdiness at the NIS offices, it has reduced the corruption-ridden quick, instant, and single-day processing of passports. Under the new arrangement, it takes an average of six weeks to complete the process of applying for and obtaining a passport. This neutralises the essence of a contactless process, which is meant to reduce the waiting period and eradicate touting at the NIS.
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The problem of the NIS over the years has been associated with the resort to Public Private Partnership (PPP) in almost all the interfaces in processing international passports. Though the agency has enough and qualified personnel to manage the systems, past ministers of interior and comptrollers-general of the NIS outsourced most jobs to contractors of private firms in which they had interest. From the payment platforms for passports to security checks on applicants, production of passport booklets, delivery of processed international passports, and even data capture, the NIS has surrendered all to private companies that smile home with a huge chunk of the fees Nigerians pay for international passports. This is in spite of the fact that personnel of the NIS are actively involved in executing these activities.
In 2019, the then Comptroller General of the NIS, Mohammed Babandede, at a meeting with the National Assembly Committee on Interior, lamented the adverse effects of the PPP arrangements on the agency. He had claimed that the NIS lost N18 billion annually due to the PPP contracts which were difficult to revoke.
According to him, “The sharing formula in the agreement between NIS and the private companies was skewed in favour of the companies, which to us is economically injurious to the nation. Expectedly, the NIS, as a body, has vehemently protested against the whole arrangement but the fact that the agreements were signed on our behalf by the Interior Ministry, private companies have continued to have an upper hand.”
That would not be the first time the NIS would cry out to the National Assembly over how the PPP arrangements have crippled the agency. In 2017, both the Senate and the House of Representatives held public hearings on the lopsided PPP agreements between the NIS and some companies and resolved that the PPPs be revoked and the jobs handed over to the NIS staff. That did not happen. We fear that the sing-song about the ‘contactless’ method of processing international passports is to create an opportunity for contracting out to another private company, another layer of jobs that the NIS staff could carry out. This approach is totally unacceptable, as it will only be self-serving. If anything, we encourage the minister to halt further PPP arrangements, procure the equipment needed for processing passports, and make use of the NIS personnel to run the process. Cleaning up the mess at the NIS should include minimising the corruption-infested PPP arrangements at the agency under any guise.