*Amos Okpu, Spokesman of the Nigeria Immigration Service, says the regulatory agency is improving the situation towards stabilising the passports issuance system in the West African country

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The Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) has explained why there is a delay in the issuance of passports to Nigerians in the last two years.

Mr. Amos Okpu, Spokesman of NIS, said the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic was a major setback in the production and processing of the important travel document.

Okpu disclosed this development during a Premium Times weekly Twitter spaces Wednesday, September 7, 2022.

The NIS Spokesman said: 鈥淭he COVID-19 19 affected operations, we didn鈥檛 shut down, and people still had access to make payments.

“When the space got open we had surplus applications.

鈥淲e have to treat them but no real production was going (on) across industries and passport production was not an exception.”

Measures to address the shortfall

Okpu, however, said the NIS had started addressing the backlog of passports.

He also noted: 鈥淲e have had an upsurge of applications during and after the COVID-19.

“We need some time to stabilise the system. We are not happy about it, we are addressing the situation.”

According to him, some of the materials used for production of the passports are not sourced from the country due to inadequate technology, said the Spokesman.

Besides, as part of efforts at ensuring that passports are distributed to Nigerian applicants, Okpu stated that personnel of the NIS now work on weekends to聽 ensure the backlog is cleared.

Issue with applicants’ poor documentation

The NIS official also lamented cases of poor documentation on the part of passport applicants.

He further said: 鈥淒ocumentation is a challenge, sometimes phone numbers of applicants don鈥檛 exist. “When we send bulk SMS to applicants, some don鈥檛 receive it because of wrong documentation.”

Okpu said: 鈥淪ome of the agents put their numbers in place of those of the applicants, it鈥檚 usually difficult to get across to them.

鈥淲e don鈥檛 have the technology. No time frame. We apologise and bear a little with us. It is not a hopeless situation. It鈥檚 a work in progress.”

The Spokesman urged Nigerian consumers to interrogate poor service delivery by officers of the Service.

He added: 鈥淲hen an officer is asking for something against the law, we expect you to interrogate it. Raise it to a higher officer.”

It is recalled Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, Honourable Minister for Interior, had said that there is no passport booklets shortage in Nigeria.

Aregbesola was quoted to have stated that 鈥渋n 2021 alone, we provided 1.3 million passports to Nigerians.

“As of today, there is no booklet shortage in Nigeria.”

The Minister also said: 鈥淎s of the second quarter of 2022, the NIS had provided 645,000 passports out of the 750,000 applications received.

鈥淭o address the challenge of the backlog, we have sent 11,000 booklets to Ikoyi, 11,000 to Alausa and 8,000 to Festac centres in Lagos State.

“We have also sent sufficient booklets to all the centres nationwide to address this challenge.

According to him, 10,000 passport booklets were聽 deployed to the new Port Harcourt passport production centre.

That was to facilitate passport issuance in the South-South state in Nigeria.

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