Passport Office and the home delivery scam, by Sheddy Ozoene

Since he assumed office as Nigeria’s Minister of the Interior on August 21, 2023, Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo has been promoted as a whizkid and a strategic planner who would introduce innovations in the ministry. At just 42, he ranks among the youngest ministers and one of the hot-heads that would stand out within the administration of President Bola Tinubu. Fittingly, the ministry of the Interior in which he supervises five key parastatals – among them the Security and Civil Defence Corps; the Nigerian Correctional Services; the Immigration Service and the Federal Fire Services – is one of the most challenging.

He didn’t disappoint in making promises to introduce reforms that are necessary to drive his vision. Of all the five agencies, he focused especially on the Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS) and promised to excel where previous administrations failed. The Passport Office in the NIS is easily among the most embarrassing public service agencies in the country, with infamous records in snail-speed issuance of international passports. The personnel not only lack courtesy in attending to Nigerians, home and abroad, many believe they corruptly undermine whatever system is put in place to make their work seamless.

So, shortly after assuming office, he had promised to introduce automation in the Passport issuance process and to dismantle all bottlenecks that hinder speedy issuance of Nigerian passports. He received plaudits for that.

One year after the reforms, how has he fared?

Considering the promises he made and the huge expectation by the public, he has not impressed. Apart from clearing the backlog of over 200,000 pending passport applications within two weeks of assuming office and increasing the costs of the passport booklets on the claim of improved security features, not much has come by way of any innovation. The agency moved the cost from N35,000 to N50,000 for the 32-page booklet with 5 year validity and from N70,000 to N100,000 for the 64-page booklet with 10 year validity.

On the crucial aspect of speeding up the process of passport issuance, the so-called reform failed spectacularly. Rather than thetwo-week limit for issuance of passports which he announced gleefully earlier in the year, applicants still spend between 5 to 7 weeks to get their documents issued or renewed. Same with the policy for contactless renewal of passports introduced since March 2024 but which has not been achieved as applicants for new passports as well as renewals still appear physically at the offices for their biometrics to be captured.

The failed promise to get the passports delivered to applicants’ homes has added a scandalous dimension to what has become Tunji-Ojo’s failed promises at the Nigerian Immigration Service. Not only are the thousands of passport applicants deceived into opting for ‘home delivery’ in the online passport application portals and are made to pay the charges, the service – in most cases – is not being rendered.

While an indigenous supply chain company, the Greater Washington Express (GWX), with head office in Ikeja Lagos, was engaged for the project and deployed to the Immigration offices in Lagos, Port Harcourt, Kano, Enugu and the headquarters in Abuja, the company has not engaged in any large-scale passport delivery services in any of the locations. The cooperation of the NIS staff, crucial for the success of the policy, has not been forthcoming.

After waiting for weeks for their passports to be delivered, to no avail, applicants who paid the N5,000 charges would get to the passport offices only to discover that while they stayed at home waiting for the delivery bikes, their passports had been produced and stockpiled in the Passport Office for weeks. So, why is this so? Enquiries at the Abuja NIS Headquarters gives the picture of what has flawed the service across the country. It reveals a disturbing scenario in which the process was being sabotaged by Immigration staff who deride the GWX arrangement as a process introduced by the Minister without proper consultation. Somehow, they have refused to flow with it.

A visit to the GWX office at the NIS headquarter was revealing: last week, a staff repeatedly told applicants who had came to collect his passports personally, that “there is nothing we can do on our own if the Immigration staff refuse to give us the list of the applicants who subscribe to the service as well as their passports and addresses for delivery.” Such altercations have become commonplace between the frustrated applicants, Immigration officials and staff of GWX. It paints a sorry picture of whatever reforms are being implemented.

Amazingly, the home delivery policy, like the contactless renewal policy, and all such policies that are meant to reduce the crowd that troop to the Passport Office daily, usually meet stiff opposition from staff of the Immigration Service. The reason is obvious to most Nigerians who know that the passport racket in which most Immigration officers engage, thrives on the crowd of desperate applicants that throng the Office. Cutting off the applicants becomes for them a ‘bad market.’

Indeed, the sabotage and mutual contempt between officials of the NIS and the GWX is deep, and it has been frustrating to thousands of Nigerians who are seemingly scammed of their hard-earned money. In November, total deliveries by GWX in Abuja account for less than 10% of the passports that are listed for home delivery, a feat that was achieved only through high-level interventions.

The question is: are the minister and the Comptroller-General of Immigration, Kemi Nandap ignorant of all these? While the cold war rages, is the GWX, whose staff doze through the working hours in their section of the NIS offices, being paid for services they are not rendering?

It is either the policy is not designed to work, or the Minister has not done enough in getting the Immigration staff to buy into it. Or both. Whatever the case, it is scandalous that in spite of the failure of the service, the agency continues to retain the subscription for it in the passport application portal. Worse still, the NIS which receives the payments has not deemed it necessary to refund applicants for the services they paid for, but which is not being rendered.