ICIR
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.
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.
At the time, former NIS DCI Iwe Nta wrote to the authorities to oppose the price increase, he says because US$ 2 000 annually is ‘exorbitant’: ‘It is much more than what other countries charge.’ In Ghana, a residence permit costs US$ 500 annually and in South Africa, the equivalent of US$ 200.
All revenue was now remitted into the account of CONTEC
But the price increase wasn’t the only thing that was wrong about the concession. Also, contrary to the rule that all revenues collected on behalf of the Federal Government should be paid into the Treasury’s account, seventy percent of fees paid for residence permits were now remitted into the account of CONTEC. In 2019, the controversial agreement became the subject of a case at the Federal High Court in Lagos, filed by Senior Advocate Femi Falana, a prominent Nigerian lawyer who is popular for fighting political corruption and human rights violations. Falana had sought a legal termination of Continental Transfert Technique Limited’s contract and a ruling for payment of all fees into the Federation Account maintained at the Central Bank of Nigeria.
Available data for 2016 and 2017 from Nigeria’s National Bureau of Statistics3 indicate that foreigners paid for 52, 414 CERPAC transactions in 2016; the figure increased to 56, 511 in 2017. In US$, this means that CONTEC, on CERPAC alone, raked in about $18 million dollars in 2016 and $20 million in 2017.
The Federal High Court in Lagos passed judgment in favour of Falana but NIS has appealed the case to the Court of Appeal, which is yet to hear it. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Interior and NIS have obtained a Stay of Execution injunction, which means that it is business as usual. A dismayed Falana commented that Nigeria keeps losing vast amounts of money while the revenue continues to be, in his words, ‘corruptly shared among the few persons who own CONTEC’.
Compromised systems
Two years before Falana dragged NIS and CONTEC to the Federal High Court, in 2017, the House of Representatives Committee on Interior, chaired by the Hon. Jagaba Adam Jagaba, had already probed the revenue collection deal. In its report4, the House Committee mentioned ‘growing concern and complaints of continued inefficiency in service delivery, incessant outsourcing of the NIS services to expatriates and civilians and… unending contract agreements and possible loss of public revenue as the contract has become a conduit for siphoning public funds and growing national security threats as a result of foreigners and civilians holding and controlling sensitive national security infrastructure’.
‘A conduit for siphoning public funds and growing national security threats’.
The report revealed that the reasons why NIS outsourced its services, not just to CONTEC, but to several private companies, was because its own systems were compromised. There was ‘multiple acquisition by citizens and non-citizens; counterfeiting of parts and or whole document; image substitution, deletion/alteration of endorsements and information; compromise of the issuance systems; and non-networking of the issuance systems’. In other words, since NIS itself was too corrupt to do its own job, other companies were contracted to do it.
Mr Chife
