Comptroller General of immigration warns Lagos passport officers of racketeering

The acting Comptroller General of the Nigerian Immigration services, Caroline Adepoju, has said more passport offices will be created in Lagos State to meet the needs of the high population of applicants in the state.

This was as Adepoju warned immigration officers against passport racketeering and other unprofessional conducts, vowing that erring officers would be sanctioned.

According to a statement made available to our correspondent on Sunday, Adepoju made this known during a parade at the Ikoyi passport office in Lagos.

The statement quoted her as urging immigration officers to adhere to “passport processing procedures and issues of border security.”

“All passport offices under the leadership of the passport control officers must ensure that all passport applicants must be served promptly and with dignity. There should be no delay in any passport offices and no applicants or Nigerians must be put under any hideous task or maltreatment.

“I decided to focus on personnel welfare and passport issues because these two areas have witnessed lots of complaints from both Nigerians and personnel of the immigration service. We will constitute more passport point offices, especially in Lagos where the population is high to address the issue of passports.”

On his part, the Passport Control Officer, Deputy Comptroller Sanni Jega, stressed that applicants should not patronise louts but go online to register.

Jega also disclosed that there was no scarcity of passport booklets.

Lagos passport offices in Ikoyi, Festac and Ikeja are notorious for extortion and inhuman treatment of Nigerians trying to procure new passports or renew expired passports.

At Festac passport office one female officer is well known for collecting as much as N80,000 for both renewal and procurement of new passports.

Same thing is replicated at Ikoyi office where the officers there make use of touts which they nick name louts to fleece hapless Nigerians. They collect as much as N75,000 to do new passport and N60,000 for renewal.

Even after collecting such huge sum of money Nigerians are still subjected to horrific sufferings to do capturing and eventual collection of the passport.

At times it takes about three to four months before they could collect their passport.

One aggrieved Nigerian complained to Agenda Papers that he paid N60,000 to one dark complexioned officer at the capturing room since February this year. After three months, same officer collected extra N15,000 to facilitate collection of the passport. Up till this moment he is yet to collect his passport. The worst is that if he calls the officer he will not pick and if he sends message he will not respond.

Same officer in 2021 collected the sum of N180,000 from an ex banker and business woman to do passport for four of her children. He did not do the passports and he I yet to refund the money even after several reports to his superiors at the Ikoyi office.

To sanitize the passport procurement and renewal nation wide the new comptroller general needs to automate most of the processes so that human involvement will be less.

Also periodically spies should be deployed to apprehend bad eggs in the agency and administer appropriate sanctions to act as deterrent to others.