Reps probe Nigeria Immigration over N72 billion

House of Representatives has summoned all foreign and indigenous technical partners of the Nigerian Immigration Service over alleged N72bn revenue ‘lost’ to them.

NIS Comptroller-General, Mohammed Babandede, on Monday at the ongoing interactive session with agencies on the 2021-2023 Medium-Term Expenditure Frame Work and Fiscal Strategy Paper, told the House Committee on Finance how the money was lost to the partners.

He said the NIS generated N14.772bn in 2018, N16.777bn in 2019 and N5.714bn in 2020 from passport sales.

He said from the revenue generated from passports in 2018, N12.181bn went to Iris Smart Technologies, N10.327bn to the company in 2019; and N3.508bn to the same company in 2020.

He the Service generated N126.136m from ECOWAS/AA in 2018, N110.316m in 2019 and N38.372m in 2020.

He said New Works Solution Limited got N1.376bn in 2018, N1.573bn in 2019 and N378.833m in 2020.

He said of the N2.075bn generated in 2018, N2.715bn in 2019 and N561.839m in 2020 on Address Verification, a technical partner, National E-government got N302.069m in 2018, N276.688m in 2019 and N82.210m in 2020.

He said the Service generated N20.358bn in 2018, N40.786bn in 2019 and N16.705bn in 2020 from Combined Expatriate Residence Permit and Aliens Card out of which FMI got N236.323m in 2018, N2.056m in 2019 and N844.290m in 2020.

He added that, the For NIS, generated N1.426 billion in 2018, N1.731 billion in 2019, and N763.249 in 2020 from E-Passport.

He said after payment to technical partners from  the revenue generated through electronic passports, the Nigeria Security Printing and Minting Company, the Federal Inland Revenue Service and Sub-Treasurer, IPTELCOM, took over N4bn from a remainder of the N68bn generated for the years 2018- 2020 from e-passports and other services.

He said the payment to all the technical partners namely got a dollar payment, totaling $92m, representing over 80 percent of the revenue the NIS generated from 2018 to 2020.

The chairman of the committee, James Faleke, responded: “We’ll use you (the CG) directly to invite all your partners to appear before this committee on Thursday. And they should come with all their tax remittances documents from personal income tax, withholding tax, Company income tax and Value Added Tax, all from the day they signed the agreement till this day”.