The process started with the inauguration of the Passports Express Centre at Maitama District, Abuja. International passports, according to the minister, will now be available within 24 hours nationwide under the new Maitama Passport Express Centre (MPEC).
“Every Nigerian has the right to a Nigerian passport and it is our responsibility to put it in the hands of anyone desirous of it within the shortest possible time, without stress.”The passport should be available within a maximum of 72 hours of a successful application. Where there are issues, the applicant must be notified within 48 hours,” said Aregbesola.
Before now, the passport used by Nigerians, the Machine Readable Passport (MRP) was produced locally by the Nigerian Security Printing and Minting Plc. At that time, there were no embedded chips in the booklets. However, some years back, precisely in 2003 during the President Olusegun Obasanjo administration, an attempt was made to domesticate the printing of the document which is now going to be an electronic passport, following the signing of Memorandum of Understanding with IRIS Smart Technologies Limited and Nigerian Security Printing and Minting Company, to address this challenge of perennial scarcity of the document. Unfortunately, this effort has not yielded fruit.
However, from my investigation, the major cause of the scarcity of passport booklets today is the foreign exchange problem. According to NIS Comptroller General, Muhammed Babandede, the contract for the production of the e-passport awarded to Iris Smart Technology had three components of the agreement, which are the supply of booklets, maintenance and the technology.
“In terms of the booklet, it is the number of booklets they supply that we pay for. They took their money and invest in it and they supply booklets, we pay. That is the nature of the contract,” he said.
I am worried over Nigerian economy, with the price of oil, Nigeria’s main export, depressed and foreign exchange reserves dwindling, the Central Bank is hanging on to its dollars to support the local naira – leaving a dwindling supply of hard currency to buy the imports that are the bedrock of Africa’s largest economy. With the oil market depressed by a producer price war and the pandemic-induced global recession, central bank reserves have fallen 20% in the past year to $36.1 billion, around five months of import cover. The bank initially sought to stem the decline by suspending dollar auctions in March and continues to severely ration its supply.
Inwalomhe Donald wrote from Kaduna
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