Nigeria Abroad
Many Nigerians have been wondering why passport scarcity persists and why the country still cannot locally produce the vital document despite President Mohammadu Buhari ordering local production in 2019.
Turns out Nigeria’s Ministry of Interior is unable to terminate a contract awarded to IRIS Smart Technologies (Nigeria) Limited (ISTL) for the production of passport booklets, according to a report by The Punch.
ISTL works in partnership with its parent company IRIS Corporation, based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Nigeria’s e-passport booklets are produced in Malaysia, but the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) activates them through the biometric data transfer.
The Ministry of Interior and the NIS officials have been holding meetings with ISTL for over one year on the termination or variation of the contract valued at over $138, 443, 740, signed in May 2003.
The situation has led to the scarcity of passport booklets as ISTL has reportedly suspended production of the booklets following moves by the federal government to cancel the contract and commence local production.
Nigeria is facing legal challenges terminating the contract which had no terminal date, a Punch source said.
“What I can tell you authoritatively is that the issue has been enmeshed in some legal tangle which they are trying to untangle. They discovered that previous administrations had committed the country to unfavourable contracts which may even be for life. Everybody has been on tenterhooks over it.
“What the government is doing now is to resolve the legal conundrum and I think they are almost done with it. They would be making arrangements for local producers of the passport (booklets) after sorting out the problem.’’
Nigeria had entered into six agreements with the contractor between March 2003 and April 2015 for the production of e-passports.
The first contract was in three phases: the first phase cost $62,881,800 (over N10bn); the second phase, $53,337,470 (over N9bn); and $62,881,800 (over N10bn) for the third.
The contract included the implementation of the Nigeria Harmonised ECOWAS Electronic Smart Passport and Autogate and was for the production of 5.5 million wafers and laminates for incorporation into the back cover of passport booklets.
It also entailed supply of Electronic Passport Management System—comprising the Passport Enrolment and Issuance System; Automated Fingerprint Identification System; Passport Personalisation System; Immigration Border Control System; and Immigration Reporting System.
The Federal Government did not commit any funds to the project, leaving the contractor as the sole financier of the contract.
ISTL reportedly took a loan of N3bn in 2003 to fund the project.
The agreement states that ISTL shall bear, pay and thereafter be reimbursed by the Ministry of Interior with all withholding taxes, VAT, duties, fees, levies and other charges. There was no renewal clause.
However, on March 1, 2007, the Ministry of Interior and ISTL signed another agreement for the production of three million machine-readable passport booklets and the embedding of the substrates.
The booklets were to be supplied at a unit price of N690.08, totalling N2,070,240,000.
According to the agreement, the settlement of the company’s invoices was to be made from 30 per cent of the revenue generated from the passport sales.
The ministry was to make an advance payment of 25 per cent of the project cost while ISTL was expected to provide technical and management training to NIS officials.
This story first appeared in Nigeria Abroad
