Nigeria could be losing big as Africa’s most populous country has continued to outsource the printing and production of international passport booklets for its citizens.
This is despite a directive by President Muhammadu Buhari that production of passports should be domesticated.
The Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) on behalf of the Federal Government pays about N24 billion ($66.8 million) annually to Malaysia, Netherlands and South Africa for the production of the Nigerian international passport booklets, BusinessDay calculations show.
The Nigerian passport is in high demand as many citizens seek greener pastures overseas owing to persisting economic hardship.
A senior officer at NIS said the Ikoyi, Lagos office of Immigration Service issues an average of 800 passports daily but has demand of over 1,000, while Festac and Ikeja issue combined issue 1,000 passports daily with demand of over 1,400.
Abuja issues an average of 500 passports daily with demand of over 800, according to the senior officer who craved anonymity because he is not authorised to speak on the matter.
Kano, Asaba, Ogun and Ibadan, which also rank top in the mobility of passports, issue 500 passports altogether, with demand of almost 1,000, while other states in Nigeria combined issue an average of 2,000 passports daily with demand of over 3,000. This implies that on a daily basis, passport offices across Nigeria issue at least 4,800 passports.
BusinessDay’s calculations, based on the above figures, show that passport offices across Nigeria issue about 1,248,000 passports a year, going by five working days in week.
The government spends about N19,500 for the production of one passport. This implies that the government spends N19,500 x 1,248,000 to produce Nigerian passports every year, which amounts to N24.34 billion.
This huge amount could have gone a long way in providing jobs for the over 20.9 million working-age Nigerians who are currently unemployed, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), and lift the over 87 million citizens The Brookings Institution said are currently living below $1.9 a day.
Africa’s biggest oil producer could also see a boost in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and a huge increase in actual revenue which has been below target for over five years since the collapse in the global oil price and a restiveness in the Niger Delta region pushed the country into its first recession in a quarter of a century.
BusinessDay checks show that the passport booklets are currently being produced by Iris Smart Technology Nigeria (ISTL) through its parent company, Iris Corporation, based in Malaysia.
A company in the Netherlands is responsible for the biometrics and security details inserted into the passports, while South Africa provides the ink used for the printings done in the passports, our findings show.
This is even as many Nigerians complain of difficulty in obtaining the international passport as immigration officers repeatedly complain of scarcity of the booklets.
Ideally, once an applicant undergoes biometric capture, booklets are supposed to be ready between three days and one week, but many Nigerians say they have had to wait for upwards of two months to get their passports. As such, many international opportunities have been missed or the applicants have been made to pay exorbitant prices.
“There was a scholarship opportunity for me in Turkey which required my passport number and it was going to expire in March 2019. I had started the process of applying for the passport in January but couldn’t get the passport out until April. I have not recovered from the frustration and disappointment from this,” said John Okoro, a graduate of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN).
Chijioke Njideka, another Nigerian, said his critically-ill father missed his hospital appointment in Florida, USA, because his passport booklet was not ready even after paying N70,000, as against the official price of N22,000.
“Although we just got the passport, it came rather late. The longer my father stays in Nigeria, the lesser the chances are that he may survive his illness. I just hope the visa interview date won’t take so long because that may be another major challenge,” Njideka said.
Aside from these missed opportunities, analysts say the current scenario would worsen the country’s poor ranking in the World Bank Ease of Doing Business, which the Washington-based lender placed at 146th among 190 countries.
It could also expose Nigeria to insecurity issues since the personal information and database of its citizens are made available to these countries where the passports are produced.
A source close to the immigration office told BusinessDay that the passport booklets are currently scarce because the government owes its technical partners abroad huge debts running into billions of naira.
“We are at the mercy of these technical partners who have refused to produce and print out the passport booklets because the government owes them. They have insisted that until the government pays its debts, they will not produce passports for Nigeria,” the source, who craved anonymity, said.
According to the source, the government had promised to explore local production as part of plans to save cost and ease the lingering scarcity of the document but has failed to execute the same.
But Sunday James, public relations officer, Nigeria Immigration Service, when contacted, told BusinessDay that the booklets were not scarce and the NIS recently dispatched about 100,000 booklets.
“As a result of the integration into the new passport, the state commands have been directed to handle the old passports, while the headquarters here in Abuja handles only the new passports. We will start dispatching the new passports to Ikoyi, Ikeja, Kano, London and other places,” James said.
“There may be a crowd of people requesting for passports but not that they don’t have booklets. Whatever be the case, everyone will be attended to. The old passports will run concurrently with the new passports so we don’t have any scarcity,” he added.
According to him, there is a directive by the president that production of passports should be domesticated and that is in the process now.
IFEOMA OKEKE & MICHAEL ANI
