Chinedu Eze
The Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) has linked the current scarcity of passport booklets to the huge debts owed its technical partners that produce the booklets.
THISDAY gathered that for more than one month, the NIS has been unable to issue passports to Nigerians nationwide owing to the huge debts that run into billions of naira.
Informed source from NIS told THISDAY that although the agency generates huge revenue for government, it still relies on government for funding of its operations and payment of bills because it is not autonomous.
The scarcity of passport booklets has led to zero activity at all the passport offices in the country. When THISDAY visited the passport office at Ikoyi, Lagos, touts were having a field day, collecting money from Nigerians who are eager to either obtain new passports or renew their existing ones for urgent reasons.
An insider at the premises told THISDAY that some of the touts collect as much as N20, 000 each from ignorant Nigerians who are desperate to have their passports renewed.
But an official of the Service told THISDAY that many Nigerians who live overseas and who wanted to renew their passports before they travelled back to their stations have rescheduled their flights hoping that soon they would obtain their passports.
Whereas those that applied for passports are still waiting, the agency is still generating revenues for government because people are still paying for passports, although we are failing to provide them the services they have paid for.
“We don’t know why the passports are in short supply but our technical partners said that they are being owed and they want government to offset the outstanding bills. The product has been scarce for more than one month now’, said an official of the agency.
He said: “Everywhere is paralysed. People are grumbling against us, thinking that we are the ones responsible for the scarcity. People pay for passports and wait for weeks before obtaining it. Many of those who live overseas have rescheduled their flights and touts are making brisk business. We have been warning Nigerians that if you give these touts money you are on your own because they cannot provide anyone passports,†the source said.
The immigration official told THISDAY that the agency has piles of applications from Nigerians and there are no signs from Abuja that things would get better soon.
“We are not losing much because people are applying but we have failed to render service. In the view of government’s ease of doing business we have failed. When eventually the booklets are made available the scramble would begin because of the protracted scarcity and I know that what will be produced cannot meet the demand,†the official said.
He noted that immigration has enough money to pay but because it is accountable to government, it is only government that can approve and make the payment, as all revenues generated by the agency go to government.
He further stated: “Immigration has huge amount of money in its coffers. We have online payment consultants so we keep on generating money but we don’t have the right to pay our creditors; it is government that does that because we are only accountable to government. This issue is an issue of policy. We are not independent, we don’t have financial autonomy and until government pay our technical partners, we may continue to experience the present scarcity of passport booklets. We generate revenue and pay to government and government provides us our financial needs.â€
He also noted that in other parts of the world similar incident cannot be allowed to happen because immigration service is classified as priority service and “in an economy characterised by recession, there is usually high level of migration, which is what we are experiencing now but many who want to leave the country cannot obtain passports across the federation.â€
