A directive by the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), in 2019 that the Nigerian passport booklets should be produced locally has not been carried out two years down the line.
Sunday PUNCH gathered that the delay was due to the inability of the Ministry of Interior to terminate the contract awarded to Smart Technology Nigeria Limited for the production of the passport booklets.
Smart Technology Nigeria Limited works in partnership with its parent company, Iris Corporation, based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
The e-passport booklets are produced in Malaysia, however the Nigeria Immigration Service activates the passport through the biometric statistics switch.
It became gathered that the Ministry of Interior and the NIS officials have been retaining meetings with ISTL for over three hundred and sixty five days on the termination or variation of the agreement worth over $138, 443, 740, signed in May 2003.
The situation has led to the scarcity of passport booklets as ISTL has reportedly suspended manufacturing of the booklets following actions by means of the Federal Government to cancel its contracts and start local manufacturing of the tour file.
An impeccable supply stated the Federal Government was facing critical felony demanding situations terminating the contracts which had no terminal date.
The professional said, “What I can inform you authoritatively is that the difficulty has been enmeshed in a few prison tangle which they may be trying to untangle. They determined that preceding administrations had devoted the u . S . To destructive contracts which may additionally even be for existence. Everybody has been on tenterhooks over it.
“What the government is doing now could be to clear up the prison conundrum and I assume they may be nearly achieved with it. They could be making arrangements for neighborhood manufacturers of the passport (booklets) after finding out the trouble.’’
Documents acquired by using our correspondent suggest that the Federal Government entered into six agreements with the contractor between March 2003 and April 2015 for the manufacturing of e-passports.
The first agreement become in 3 stages with the first section costing $sixty two,881,800 (over N10bn), whilst the second one segment prices $fifty three,337,470 (over N9bn) and the 1/3 section, $62,881,800 (over N10bn).
The agreement, which included the implementation of the Nigeria Harmonised ECOWAS Electronic Smart Passport and Autogate, turned into for the manufacturing of 5.5 million wafers and laminates for incorporation into the again cover of passport booklets, deliver 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.
Checks suggest that the Federal Government did no longer dedicate any funds to the task, leaving the contractor as the sole financier of the settlement.
ISTL reportedly took a mortgage of N3bn in 2003 to fund the implementation of the assignment.
The settlement states that ISTL shall endure, pay and thereafter be reimbursed by means of the Ministry of Interior with all withholding taxes, VAT, obligations, charges, levies and different charges related with the execution of the settlement which did no longer comprise any renewal clause.
However, on March 1, 2007, the Ministry of Interior and Iris Smart Tech signed every other settlement for the production of three million device-readable passport booklets and the embedding of the substrates.
The booklets have been to be furnished at a unit fee of N690.08, totalling N2,070,240,000.
According to the agreement, the settlement of the employer’s invoices became to be crafted from 30 in step with cent of the revenue generated from the passport sales.
The ministry was to make an advance fee of 25 in line with cent of the mission value while ISTL was anticipated to provide technical and management schooling to NIS officers.
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