May 09, (THEWILL) – The Acting Comptroller General of Immigration, Isa Idris, has said that the online payment system for passport application and issuance has paid off.
Idris, therefore, appealed to Nigerians to cooperate with the organisation, in its bid to sanitise the system and improve service delivery, especially in the area of international passport issuance.
Mr Idris, in a short message to journalists at the weekend, said apart from reducing incidences of corruption, the new system “has also helped to improve productivity, reduce rowdiness and curtail excesses of touts and some officers of the NIS.”
He said; “The integration of the online appointment system with the existing online payment system, has restored orderliness to the passport offices to a large extent, as applicants can now make payment and choose the appointment date and time which is convenient to them, thereby reducing the time they would have spent at the passport offices as each passport office has been allocated with a daily appointment capacity which was arrived at, based on an analysis done.”
Idris, however, condemned what he described as a “fire brigade” approach by many Nigerians, who he noted, usually wait until the time they need passports before applying for them.
According to him, since September 2021, when he assumed duties as acting comptroller general, his team has worked tirelessly to clear the backlogs of unproduced passports. He said the backlogs were as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, which he noted halted movements globally.
Giving statistics of the backlogs of passports he inherited and how much has been produced in less than eight months of his administration, Idris said there were 85,163 passport applications that were yet to be processed locally, while the figure stood at 18,746 in the Diaspora, as of September 2021.
He said as a result of the backlog, overcrowding and rowdiness were observed across the various offices of the organisation, and the need for urgent implementation of the enhanced e-passport as initiated by his predecessor.
Mr Idris said as of April, the backlogs in Nigeria have been reduced to 33,625, while the foreign backlog now stands at 9,661.
He said; “It is pertinent to note that between January and April 2022, a total of 478,650 booklets have been distributed across the globe, and I can assure you that more than 10,000 Nigerians have benefited from this initiative and it is still ongoing.
“The Immigration attaches have also been mandated to undertake similar interventions within their areas of coverage with countries like Canada, Italy, Spain, Israel keying into this initiative.
“Hungary and Romania participated credibly during the migration crises resulting from the ongoing Russia and Ukraine war. So we are making progress.”
The acting CGIS said the launch of the enhanced electronic passport in some parts of the country and the United Kingdom has helped in no small measure to ease the tension created by the backlogs.
He said: “The backlog of about 40,000 in the South-west and part of the North-central where the enhanced e-passport was rolled out December 2021 has been cleared. South-east, which had about 27,000 before the enhanced e-passport was rolled out on March 3, 2022 is now about 75 percent cleared.
“The backlog at the other centres within Nigeria has also improved with the supply of booklets. As a result of the improvement, we have made the issue of clearance of sucking a top priority by ensuring the supply of a large quantity of booklets as well as closely supervising the allocation of these booklets to the passport offices.”
He said a number of task force teams were set up and sent to various passport issuing offices with the mandate to ensure strict utilisation and speedy clearance of the backlog.
He said apart from the South-east, South-west and part of the North-central, where the enhanced e-passport has been launched in the country, the next phase will be launched in the other parts of North-central, North-west and South-south, before moving to the North-eastern region.
About the Author
Sam Diala is a Bloomberg Certified Financial Journalist with over a decade of experience in reporting Business and Economy. He is Business Editor at THEWILL Newspaper, and believes that work, not wishes, creates wealth.
