Thank you for sharing your experience. I am also applying for a fresh passport for me and my children age 3 and 5. They are scheduled for 28th of April for capturing but mine is on the 18th but due to the Easter holiday, I will reschedule mine to early May since all the days in April is filled up. So please, I will like to know what I can use as an ID for there application since they both have an early date. Also can my application or NIN serves as an ID since they both need means of identification from parent. iguita:
Hi guys, I did my passport renewal today and in the spirit of sharing, especially since I got a lot of info from this page, I want to share my experience today.
I will share general experience and I will then my share specific experience.
When you go to Ikoyi for capturing, go to Servicom straight. They will verify your NIN, check your documents, open a folder for you. Then they will ask you to go upstairs to do some verifications and signatures before you go to capture.
For capturing, there are different rooms, there is general, VIP 1, 2 and 3.
Of all the VIPs, only VIP 1 is really VIP. VIP 2 is for paramilitary/ aged persons. VIP 3 is for pregnant women and babies. All the VIPs (or should I say VIP3 since that was the one I used since I had my 10 month old son with me) is beautiful, they had children drawings on the wall, ACed and nice staff. I peeped through general and it was general indeed.
When I arrived, I went into the GTBank waiting road and they started calling names of people with folders. Me that I arrived by 7:30am and was number 17, they called the first 20 and I was not part of them. Then one senior officer came in to ask if we had complaints na him I raise my hand, they have not called my name ooo. She asked for my folder and I said I did not have one so she attached an officer to take me to Servicom.
Now let me go to my specific issue.
My passport expired in Feb, and I wanted to do a fresh passport for my 10-month-old son. So I made payment on the 25th of Feb, and got Mar 31st as capture date for both of us. After filling the application (re-issue for me and fresh for my son), I realized that I had used a different middle name for the young man which is different from the middle name in his NIN. if you find yourself in this situation, go to your capture centre before your capture date. Go to Servicom, explain to them and they will take you to Helpdesk. Those ones will send an email to the company managing the passport data and they will change it for you. Unfortunately for us, we did not do this. So once we got to Servicom, i was cleared and my son was delayed. We were told to go complain at the helpdesk then come back for capturing my son. This is not a good idea as we are having a family trip in May and we cannot leave a 10 month old (he will be 1 then) alone in Naija. So my wife spoke with the Servicom guy who said he will help us, but it will be around 2pm before the name change can be possible.
One thing to note is that immigration is different from last year. Last year when my wife did her own renewal, even gateman will bill you just to enter the gate if you no stand well well. But now, anyone can enter. So we expected the Servicom guy to call some big money. I was willing to pay instead of missing the trip in May and coming back to the dreaded Immigrations office. The guy was telling us how difficult it will be but las las, he said he does not want money, that he just wants to help us. Matter of fact, nobody asked us for a dime,the money we spent was we appreciating people who helped us. Baby was crying so wifey went to feed him in the car. I carry folder begin follow Servicom bobo. he took me to helpdesk and the guy there started blaming me for making mistake. Sir, i have made the mistake, what is the correction. While he was complaining, he was already logging in my issue in the computer. By the time he finished blaming me for making the mistake, he said he was done.
So I moved on to complete my own capturing by going upstairs to do my verification. I do not know what they were checking but about 4 officers checked my application, asked for my expired passport, etc. One babe before me was even interviewed. I feel the officer wanted to collect number though because na only the babe him interview. The rest of us got a barking voice telling us to stay outside and wait till we can imagine him calling our names. I say so because he did not call my name. it was a nice guy who was his subordinate that helped me pick my folder from his desk.
By the time I finished this, my baby's name was confirmed so I was able to do both.
Next step was to go do payment verification. After this, I had to do vetting for the baby. For vetting, they have two desks. One for ages 0-6 and the other for I think 7-12. They asked for me and my wife, our IDs. My ID was my expired passport so it was rejected. Thankfully, since I was doing a renewal, my passport application was used as my ID. Else I would have done a photocopy of my drivers license.
After vetting, we went for capturing in VIP3 because we had a baby. Because we had name change issues, we had to go meet one officer who changed the name ( I wonder what the company did. maybe they activated the possibility for the officer to change the name). Wifey gave that one 2k. Capturing took almost an hour. So many people with children.
After capturing, I went back to Servicom to go confirm our details again. Govt is really taking this NIN thing seriously. The main guy that helped us in Servicom, we wanted to give 10k, but wifey gave him 5k, as sure ijebu babe. So we spent 7k out of pocket to grease DIY. If we did not have any issues with name, we would have not spent a dime and most importantly, nobody asked us or demanded for money from us, we gave with our church mind.
After capturing, they gave us a slip with a number, but no collection date was put there. The guy that helped us in Servicom said it will take 8 weeks. I tackled him that govt said 3 weeks and he smiled. I have tried to check the application portal but it shows that my application was not found. Please let me know how to check the application status if you know how to.
Also has anyone done their capturing in Ikoyi in recent days? How long did it take you to get your passport?
So this is my story today. We arrived Passport office by 7:30am, and left at 1:45pm. About 6 hours 15 minutes. Would have left at a few minutes to one pm if not for the generator going off and the guy that was to do the final verification was not able to connect to the server.
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Travel / Re: Cost Of A Nigeria International Passport by sbjtunde: 2:20pm On Oct 07, 2022