An estimated 100,000 Nigerians who applied for international travel passports have been waiting for months on account of an accute shortage of booklets.
In the process, many of these applicants are missing lifetime business, medical and study opportunities among others, while some have to reschedule appointments, where possible.
Government had said on the introduction of the e-passport in 2007 that the process of obtaining the travel document would take no more than 24 hours.
BusinessDay investigations in passport offices across the country yesterday, reveal that there are about 100,000 files of applicants who have had their data, including finger prints, photographs and other details captured and are waiting for booklets for the issuance of the passports.
There are two configurations of international passports, one with 32 pages and the other with 64 pages.
The official cost of the 64-page booklet which is favoured by frequent travellers is N24,000 while the 32-page booklet, favoured by infrequent travellers is N19,000.
There has been longstanding racketeering around the international passport in Nigeria and many developing countries, on account of burstling populations, poverty and a pervasive quest for perceived greener pastures abroad.
At the Imo State Command of the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) yesterday in Owerri, a source who spoke on condition of anonymity, disclosed that no less 5,000 applicants who have been captured in the system are yet to have their passport booklets printed.
The number of applicants at the department’s offices in Festac, Ikeja and Ikoyi offices in Lagos State, is not less than 7,000 each, our reporter was informed.
Sources close to the Nigerian Immigration Service say the booklets have been out of stock from about three months ago.
“There was a situation where our official who travelled down to the service’s headquarters in Abuja to collect passport booklets, returned with just 400 as against the thousands of waiting applicants,’’said an inside source who declined to be named because he was not officially authorised to speak on the matter.
The situation is the same in all states of the federation, including the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, as many applicants mill about mostly to no avail in the scorching sun, in quest of the green travel booklet.
Tochukwu Nwosu, a passport applicant who spoke to our reporter, said several factors, including scarcity of foreign exchange were at the root of the matter.
Nwosu further observed that the 32-page booklet which was in higher demand, seemed to have been exhausted and that the Immigration Service was trying to force the 64-page booklet on applicants.
Magdalene Oghenekoro, who is seeking medical treatment abroad, said she had paid about N39, 000 as against the official rate of N24, 000 for a 64-page passport but had not received the passport in the last three months.
Immigration sources say the Federal Government was trying to resolve the issue of the exchange rate with the suppliers and that the 32-page passport booklet would arrive Nigeria as soon as it is ready.
Dairo Omokaro wondered why government should be printing the international passport outside the country when the equipment can be procured to produce the quantity needed here. Omokaro cited the case of the driver’s license and other security documents which are produced locally.
Reaction to the purported scarcity of international passport booklets across the country, James Sunday, Assistant Comptroller of Immigrations and Public Relations Officer of the Nigeria Immigration Services, told our reporter that there is no scarcity of passport booklets.
Sunday blamed the backlog of files in some passport offices across the country on the unnecessary panic of applicants who throng major data capturing centres in the metropolis, such as the Federal Capital Territory Abuja, Ikeja, Ikoyi and Festac office in Lagos, as well as Port Harcourt, among others.
He stated that the Comptroller-General, Muhammad Babandede, has decentralised and increased passport data capturing centres to ease the pressure on already existing centres.
MIKE OCHONMA
