By Musa Tanimu Nasidi
It was accolades galore last week for the Kogi command Immigration Passport officer, Assistant Comptroller, Tomisin Adebola Adetula for his customer-friendly attitudes and reduction in waiting time for passport delivery.
It now takes less than
2 days for an applicant without issues in his or her file to procure an International passport, unlike during the tenure of his predecessor.
Investigation conducted by this Reporter revealed that unlike In the past, where a large number of persons would be seen clustering around the Passport Control Officers’ (PCO’s) office. But the reverse is now the case due to the ingenuity of the PCO and his boss, Yunusa Musa, Comptroller,Kogi state (NIS) command.
Adetula has won the heart of many applicants and bagged the wrath of a few Immigration elements whose stock in trade is to extort passport customers through delay tactics in procuring a passport.
Mr Abraham Moses, who was at NIS office Lokoja, to renew his international passports spoke with few officers and applicants on the new wind of change in the passport office.
“Upon assumption of office some of the challenges he met on the ground was a backlog of files, which had been lying unattended to for several months,” an officer said under condition of anonymity.
We further gathered that some of the challenges faced by the immigration unit were not limited to an epileptic power supply, influx of touts and extortionists and poor channels of tackling complaints, which was said to have been rectified by the Yunusa Musa on assumption of office as comptroller of NIS, Kogi state command.
Before the arrival of Adetula, the backlog of unattended files draws condemnation from the general public including the press.
“With the backlog of unattended files, there was a lot of pressure coming from all cadres of the society for the production of their long-awaited passport applications.
This misdemeanor led to massive condemnation from the media, which certainly created an embarrassing image for the Immigration service” said our source.
THEANALYSTNG learnt that the situation was exacerbated by the lack of an effective mechanism for handling complaints from customers.
Checks also revealed that the lull in production saw the boot of touts, who set about exploiting the situation by extorting money from the applicants.
“The unit, however has experienced some reformation with the assumption of office of the incumbent Passport Control Officer (PCO), Mr Adetula, Assistant Deputy Comptroller of Immigration (ACI).
Expressing joy at the ongoing reformatory process, the unit was undergoing, a female senior officer who serves in one of the offices said they have been receiving several commendations from numerous applicants.
She said: “We are very happy about the reforms carried out by the present boss. Oga have introduced some reforms for the clearance of backlogs, such as constant supply of booklets from our headquarters in Abuja.
“ Saturday operations by the issuance/ collection unit to enable a large number of applicants to collect their passports on non-working days, so as to reduce crowd on working days.
“Setting up performance target for the units and individual officers of the units and putting a time frame for the clearance of the backlogs.” she said.
Further additional reforms carried out for both sustainability of operations and comfort of the applicants include total clearance of backlogs and waiting for files after capturing, availability of booklets, sensitisation of the entire workforce.
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According to our findings,the cashless policy has also helped in edging out of tout and touting and has also ensured that there is no delay in the production process, even without knowing anybody.
“We are giving credit for the success of the reforms to the Comptroller General of Immigration (CGI), Jere.
An Immigration officer said Jere has taken measures to ensure the consistent supply of passport booklets.
