Yemisi Salau
Nigerians wishing to travel are finding it increasingly impossible as more than 5000 passport applications have been abandoned at Ikoyi Passport Office since the resumption of issuance on June 8, 2021/
Everyday applicants throng to the office and leave without positive response from the Nigerian Immigration Service officials.
One of the applicants who wished to renew his passport alleged that a lot of scramble and scheming go on everyday he visited the office.
Ikoyi is the busiest passport office in Nigeria, which processes average of 15,000-20,000 monthly, while Festac and Alausa offices produce about 50 per cent of that figure of about 7,500 to 10, 000 passports monthly.
According to THISDAY since the resumption of passport issuance in June, the Ikoyi Passport Office has not been able to process up to 7, 000 passports monthly.
Senior Immigration official abreast of events at the office that a lot of restructuring has taken place in Ikoyi Passport Office and many officials who are ICT compliant have been posted out and replaced with former field officers who don’t have the skill to effectively manage the production systems.
“They are now learning on the job and this is causing so much delays. They locked up the applications of many Nigerians who requested for the passports from that office. Many of them are renewing and others are requesting for new passports. There are over 5000 of them. But the problem is that the good hands that have been doing it before have been transferred. Now, if you want your application to be attended to, you have to meet certain officials and negotiate with them so that yours will be part of the few that will be attended to,” the official told THISDAY.
The who do not want their name in print for fear of been persecuted told THISDAY that since the current Passport Control Officer (PCO), Lima Abdullahi took over in June 2021, many officials from the production department and others have been transferred from Ikoyi Passport Office.
This, they revealed, has hampered passport production and given rise to delays never experienced before in that Ikoyi office.
“The system is destabilised. There is a kind of anarchy going on in the Ikoyi Passport Office right now. If you go to Festac and Ikeja offices you will see orderliness. Ironically those working there learnt from the Ikoyi office. Many Nigerians like to obtain their passports from the Ikoyi office because of the efficiency, which has now become a thing of the past. The legacy past officials who headed that Office left behind has been shattered; there is no more schedule in passport processing, no schedule and no passport for production,” the official told THISDAY.
Informed source also told THISDAY that many applicants who came to check whether their passports were issued learnt that their files were missing.
“If you complain to some officials they will tell you that you see them so that they will look for it for you or they will refer you to somebody that will ‘assist’ and with knowing look, you will be motioned to go to him. So despite all the things they said that there wouldn’t be physical interface in the process of getting your passport, you cannot obtain your passport by following that official channel of submitting your request through the Immigration portal. Sometimes they tell the applicants to start afresh through regeneration of applications, ”the official said.
But spokesperson of the Ikoyi Passport Office, Grace Udu dismissed the allegations against the Ikoyi Passport Office and told THISDAY that the major reason that there was delay was because many applicants did not have their National Identification Number (NIN), which is compulsory for the issuance of passports.
After the suspension of issuance of passport in order to clear the backlog for about four weeks, the Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS) resumed issuance of passports on June 8, 2021 with the conditions that passport application processing to collection would be standardised to take a total of six weeks.
The NIS had promised that there would be zero-tolerance stance to all forms of touting adding that no applicant would be made to pay any illegitimate fees.
