How Immigration officers aid drug couriers, visa racketeers

While in one case, some unpatriotic officers were found to have supplied drug couriers with hundreds of passports, visa racketeers and other criminals have also been issued with multiple Nigerian passports, sometimes up to three, including diplomatic and official passports, in order to travel or escape from the law. In 2013, the National Drug Law […]

While in one case, some unpatriotic officers were found to have supplied drug couriers with hundreds of passports, visa racketeers and other criminals have also been issued with multiple Nigerian passports, sometimes up to three, including diplomatic and official passports, in order to travel or escape from the law. In 2013, the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) arrested some men at the Murtala Mohammed International Airport, Lagos, who were attempting to traffic large quantities of cocaine.
Investigations showed that they were using passports issued in the name of family members of some prominent Nigerians. Searches in the homes of the arrested drug traffickers and their sponsors yielded even more passports.
In all, several hundreds of passports were found and seized, many of them in the names of the children of prominent Nigerians, including a member of the leadership of the Senate, ministers, heads of government agencies, icons of industry, notable businessmen and, ironically, the head of one of the anti-corruption agencies in the country.
When it realised that the case was beyond mere drug offences, the NDLEA transferred the case to the EFCC so that the anti-graft agency could properly investigate the sabotage of the process of issuing travel passports.
It appears that the EFCC investigation into the matter may have been stalled for some reasons as there are no indications that any Immigration officer involved in the racket has been prosecuted.
Over the last 15 months or so, several officers of the NIS from different states who were found to have been involved in issuing the passports have been invited to the commission’s head office in Abuja and interrogated.
However, none of them has been prosecuted in spite of the overwhelming evidence against them. The case of Immigration officers issuing passports to visa racketeers and other criminals appears to be even more scandalous as the most unscrupulous characters were issued with prized diplomatic passports without any concerns for what the beneficiaries would use the travel document.
The Independent Corrupt Practices and other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) commenced an investigation into allegations of production of multiple passports to visa racketeers by the Immigration Service over a year ago after repeated complaints by several embassies in Nigeria.
The embassies complained that apart from applicants presenting fake or forged travel documents, it was also discovered that they could produce passports in multiple names. Each time a visa application was denied, the applicant just went and got another passport in another name.
What the ICPC found was mindboggling. Apart from discovering several syndicates that specialise in forging all kinds of travel documents, investigators also found out that unpatriotic Immigrations officers had been supplying visa applicants with multiple passports. While even foreigners with criminal intentions easily got Nigerian passports, anybody who could pay the price could also get diplomatic and official passports meant for highly placed government officials.
The case of Faith Chinyere Okeke and Macellina Nwamaka Maduabuchukwu, two smart Nigerian ladies who beat all odds, including the law, to fulfil their dream of travelling abroad to seek greener pastures, is particularly interesting. For reasons best known to them, the two friends chose India as their preferred destination. However, there was a snag; they did not possess the documents to apply for a visa to India. That is no problem, a friend told them. The friend said all they needed to do was consult some specialists in travel documents who would produce all that they needed to present to the Indian High Commission.
That is how Okeke and Maduabuchukwu got introduced to Johnbosco Okonkwo Temple, an experienced and master forger. For a fee, Johnbosco in no time produced the fake supporting documents the ladies needed to obtain a visa. These include forged bank account statements, forged letter of introduction from a fake employer, forged invitation letter of invitation from an Indian hospital indicating that the ladies had a health challenge that required surgery, as well as a forged letter of referral from a Nigerian hospital.
Okeke and Maduabuchukwu presented these documents along with their passports, both issued on August 16, 2013 and expiring in August 15, 2018 to the High Commission. Discovering the documents to be forged, the embassy alerted the ICPC whose operatives stormed the High Commission’s offices in the Central Business District, Abuja and arrested the two ladies.
Investigations soon led to the arrest of Johnbosco, the visa racketeer who procured the documents for both of them. Both agreed to stand as prosecution witnesses in the trial of Johnbosco. On that basis they were both released on bail. A Deputy Comptroller of Prisons signed the bail bond for both of them.
However, investigations by the icirnigeria.org show that both ladies, desperate to travel to India, went to obtain different sets of passports in new names which they still presented to the Indian High Commission with a new set of forged documents.
This time, they got lucky and obtained a visa to travel to India. Both are now in that country living with two Nigerian men.
Okeke and Maduabuchukwu have both been declared wanted by the ICPC for jumping bail and the Nigerian government, it was learnt, is in the process of officially requesting for their extradition by the Indian government.
Investigations by icirnigeria.org revealed that most of the abuse in the issuance of the Nigerian passports occur at the headquarters of the Immigration Service in Abuja, where passport racketeering is lucrative.
Our investigations show that one of the reasons for the deep corruption at the NIS headquarters arose from political influence in the recruitment of personnel into the Service.
It was learnt that not only do political office holders and senior administration officials influence their wards’ recruitment into the Service; they also dictate where such people are posted. And, the passport office at the NIS headquarters is regarded as one of the most rewarding postings.
Ordinarily, it should be difficult for anybody to manipulate the passport issuance process as there is in place a very good system aimed at preventing abuse. First, the process is rigorous and has in build methods of preventing abuse. An application must come with a birth certificate and indigeneship certificate and go through security verification, document fraud screening, approval system, background check and address verification. But unscrupulous officers sabotage all these processes.
Immigration runs an Automatic Face Identification System (AFIS), which detects and automatically rejects any duplication of data or biometrics. So if a person with a passport applies for another one using another name, address and other data, the system will reject the application, providing the previous data as reason for the rejection.
However, the database used by the system is not managed or controlled by the Immigration but by a technical partner that was brought in to help the country migrate from the Machine Readable Passport (MRP) to the e-passport and produces the Nigerian passport and thus keeps the database of all passport holders. Our investigations show that unscrupulous Immigration officers collude with personnel of AFIS Technology to sabotage the process by manipulating the data management system to illegally issue passports to underserving persons.
What happens, it was gathered, is that corrupt Immigration officers collect money from persons desperate to own a Nigerian passport and then approach database managers to remove the existing data about an applicant from the database. The application is then made with new data which is used in issuing a new passport to the applicant. In this manner, one person can acquire as many passports as he/she can afford. Another way by which the process is sabotaged, it was discovered, is that applicants are allowed, during the fingerprint and biometrics acquisition process, to use the wrong fingers to register.
Usually, an applicant is required to register his/her thumb and index finger. However, some Immigration officials allegedly allow applicants to use a different set of fingers. So, one person can use this method to obtain up to three or four passports.
The Comptroller General of Immigration, Mr. David Parradang, confirmed also that some of his men were under investigation in connection to the issuance of the passports to drug couriers. He said that the officers who issued all the passports had been traced and that at different times they had being invited to Abuja from the states where they serve to answer questions from EFCC investigators.
“We found out the people that acquired them, authorised their acquisition and we called them state by state and one after the other…If they were cleared fine but if they were found to have colluded to beat the system, they would have to face the consequences of their actions,” Parradang said.
He said that the investigation was still going on and that any officer found guilty would be dismissed and prosecuted in line with the Passport (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act. On passport racketeering, the CGI too conceded that there are bad eggs in the Service, but assured that they are being flushed out of the system as they are discovered.
“I can never sit down here and tell you that Immigration officers are 100 per cent clean. There must be some who collude but whenever I hear of case, I will investigate it,’ he said, adding, “I cannot tell you that manipulating the system does not happen but we are dealing with it. We have dismissed several officers for passport malpractices.”
He pointed out, however, that many of the problems with the passport issuance processes are out of the hands of the Immigration Service, arguing that it has to work with documents issued by other agencies, which it cannot verify.
Parradang also said that he had started the process of ensuring that all passport databases are domiciled and managed by the Immigration Service as he had asked all consultants, including IRIS Technology, to open data centres at the NIS headquarters in Abuja. Immigration officials, according to him, would be trained to handle such data in the future. The EFCC did not respond to queries on the matter as the commission’s spokesman, Wilson Uwujaren, said that he did not have any facts about it.
Culled from: icirnigeria.org