ENTRENCHED interests, from top to bottom, have turned border control into a money-making machine for those at the head of the Nigerian Immigration Service. Partnerships with a number of private companies siphon off monies paid to them by the state as well as by visa and passport applicants. Court judgements, a parliamentary probe and even petitions by the agencies’ own former senior officers have not been able to dent the scheme. With honest civil servants having left in frustration, and a former director attacked, smeared, and sacked, the scheme has persisted at the agency that controls one hundred and fifty Nigerian borders.

At the parking lot of the huge headquarters of the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) on Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport road in Abuja, smart-looking young men in dandy pastel shirts and khaki trousers eagerly await the visitors who seek the country’s international passport, or alternatively visa extension, residence permits, and the like. One look at the disordered and lost-looking crowds at the entrance to the building immediately hammers home the need for what they have to offer: fixing services to navigate what follows. The extra 10 000 Naira (US$ 26) they demand on top of the official passport fee of N25,000 is a small price to pay to avoid what would otherwise be a torturous and time-consuming, often ill-fated hassle.

One also pays because the consequence for applicants unwilling to pay is instant cessation of services.

Remarkably, Nigeria officially does not even produce the expensive documents: these functions have been outsourced to private companies in so-called public-private partnerships (PPP’s). The country’s e-passport booklets are produced in Malaysia by the Iris Corporation and its Nigerian subsidiary, Iris Smart Technology Nigeria Limited; NIS only activates the booklets through biometric data transfer. In 2019, Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari, reportedly worried that the country’s international passports were being produced abroad, directed the Immigration Service to terminate the contract, but the action still has to be carried out, probably because of anti-cancellation clauses in the agreement. 1

The contracts cannot be cancelled
Commenting on the partnership with Iris, former deputy Comptroller of Immigration (DCI) at NIS and anti-corruption whistleblower, Iwe Unaowo Nta, said that ‘Iris Smart Technology was meant to ‘Build, Operate and Transfer’ the production of international passports to Nigeria,’ but that, ‘in actual fact, the staff of Iris Smart Technologies operate from the NIS facilities and supervise the job, while the staff of NIS carry out supportive activities’. He added that ‘NIS staff have the capacity to do this, but NIS cannot revoke the agreement for fear of being dragged to the International Arbitration Court for breach of contract’.

A twenty-million-dollar market

The IRIS story does not stand alone. Resident permits, visas, and other travel documents have been outsourced to other private companies2, too, and, ever since, these papers have also become much more expensive. Until 2018, the official cost of the residence permit, (known as the Combined Expatriate Residence Permit and Alien Card Fee, CERPAC, to be paid annually,) was the Naira equivalent of US$ 1 000. However, in 2018, the Ministry of Interior increased the fee to US$ 2 000 per residence permit per year, essentially because of the controversial concession of the printing of residence permit booklets to Continental Transfert Technique Limited, CTTL or simply CONTEC, a Nigerian subsidiary of the multinational security group CONTEC Global.

READ MORE HERE: https://www.icirnigeria.org/the-border-control-syndicate-how-plunder-continues-in-nigerian-immigration-service-despite-court-rulings/