The Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) has debunked the reports of discriminatory passport charges for northern and southern passport applicants.
Photos of disparities in charges for applicants in the North and South had gone viral on social media in the early hours of Thursday.
One of the photos showed that while passport applicants between the ages of 18—59 from the South are charged a total of N25,000 for a 32-page standard passport with five years of validity, applicants within the same age group from the North are charged a total of N17,000 for same passport type.
Another photo of passport application for persons from the South and North between the ages of 0—17 juxtaposed showed that while the total fee for southern applicants for a standard passport is N25,000 that of northern applicants is N10,750.
Following the revelation, Nigerians have queried the fee disparity, registering their displeasure with the preferential treatment given to northerners.
In a swift reaction to the reports, NIS refuted the claims, describing it as ‘laughable’ and ‘pedestrian’.
The agency, in a statement via its official Twitter page yesterday, noted that there is no discriminatory passport charges between the North and South.
“The attention of the Comptroller General Isah Jere Idris has been drawn to some stories about discriminatory Passport charges for Passport applicants in the North and South of the country,” NIS stated.
“The report is not only laughable but also very pedestrian. The Passports we issue are for Nigerians irrespective of where they live including those in the diaspora. What we do have are two Passport regimes that are running concurrently. They are the electronic Passport and enhanced electronic Passport.
“The latter is an improvement of the former. It is a product of the latest technology in Passport issuance. It has improved security features, and a polycarbonate data page and comes in three categories of 32-page five-year validity (N25,000), 64-page five-year (N35000) and 64-page ten-year validity (N70000). It was unveiled sometime in 2019 & seven Passport Centres including Ikoyi, Abuja, Alausa, FESTAC, and Port Harcourt.
“Kano & Gwagwalada were immediately migrated to the enhanced Passport regime then. Meanwhile, the electronic Passport is the usual one we have been issuing since the introduction of ePassport in 2007. The fee chargeable ranges from N8750-N17800 depending on the age of the applicant and category of Passport.
“At the moment, the Service is steadily migrating all its Passport Centres to the enhanced ePassport regime. To this effect, all the Centres in South-South, South-West & South-East including our Desks in the UK & USA have been fully migrated to the enhanced regime.
“In the work plan, Centres in the North-West, North-East, Canada&others are getting ready for migration to the enhanced Passport regime very soon.
“We, therefore, like to reiterate that there are absolutely no discriminatory Passport fees anywhere on our platform. We advise those peddling such empty narrative to get educated by this clarification please.”
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