Seamless Service as the Bedrock of Nigerian Immigration Service
Chiemelie Ezeobi writes that seamless service has become the bedrock for the FESTAC Passport Office of the Nigerian Immigration Service. Upon assumption of duty, the Passport Control Officer, Deputy Comptroller Adeola Adesokan, tackled endemic corruption
The FESTAC Control Office is one of the three centres belonging to the Lagos Command of the Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS), where applicants can acquire a Nigerian passport. At its helm of affairs is Deputy Comptroller of Immigration Adeola Adesokan, a seasoned officer who assumed office after her duty tour on a foreign mission.
Described as versatile and articulate, Adesokan has, from all indications, transformed the FESTAC passport office upon assumption of duty on September 2020 by tackling endemic issues like extra charges. She also fought 'touting' to a standstill, thus ensuring a seamless process for passport applicants.
Elimination of Touts
On a personal visit to the passport office, the absence of touts was hard to ignore, given that touting is one issue that most passport offices constantly battle. For Adesokan, eradicating the menace of touting from her jurisdiction was a brainer given that the core of her mandate was 'Seamless Service Delivery'. Having acknowledged that the touts were clogs in the wheel of her mandate, she set out to eliminate that, thereby ensuring passport seekers acquire their passports without the extra charges they would have paid.
Explaining how she achieved that, Adesokan said: "Foremost, some couple of months ago, the Minister of Interior, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola was here with my Comptroller General, Mohammad Babandede and they gave us strict warnings that, you must clear your environment of touts and middlemen who will come around and say they will help Nigerians and extort money from them."
She added, "So what we did is, we became friendly with the community. We projected the SERVICOM unit outside, which means you don’t need to go and meet the touts outside as we are ready to help you. We opened our doors. You will see a lot of banners (as) come into the SERVICOM Unit. In short, you will see officers asking, ‘Can we help you?'
At the unit, immigration officers usually explain the "procedure." She added, "This is the process, and if you do that for one person, the news spreads to about five more people, and that’s why you have been seeing an influx of people liaising directly with us in Festac Passport Office."
Sanitising the System
Whilst the sanitising of their immediate environment worked, Adesokan said she also worked inwards in cleaning up her jurisdiction because charity, of course, begins at home.
This, she said, is in tandem with the vision statement of the NIS, which is "to be a modern, effective and efficient immigration service, manned by a well-trained and motivated workforce".
On this, she said: "When I came in here, I was given a mandate, and one of the mandates is to ensure that officers are well-trained in the vision of the service. The service has some tenets adopted by the comptroller general, and he wanted to spread it around. Not just passport offices but also at the airport."
Continuing, Adesokan stated, "Likewise, there’s this training they go through on making people feel welcome, for them to be treated well and relating well to the public. We are not only a security outfit but also a service delivery outfit. So we began with training my officers every Thursday. They began to understand the vision of service, and now, you will see landmark changes in the attitude, behaviour, mannerism of officers."
"As a matter of fact, we had a lot of topics on mindset. Like the Comptroller General of Immigration would say, if you want to be producing passport, if you want to still be Nigerian Immigration Service," she noted, "then we must begin to change our attitude, behaviour to work. If not, there will be no future for the service."
Customer Appreciation Week
One innovation Adesokan kicked off was Customer Appreciation Week.
"Customer Appreciation Week or Day is a great medium to interface with the public. It's a day they give us feedback on how we are treating them. We also give them light snacks and water," Adesokan explained. "In fact, CWay gave us bottled water, we chilled it and gave it to the public, and they were happy. We were asking them how long they have been here. 'When did you finish your capturing?'"
She further noted, "If people have been saying, 'I have been here for like one hour', we are looking at a way of reducing their waiting time so that we can inject more officers to a particular section. That way, people can return to their vocation without spending a whole day in the Festac Passport Office."
Reducing Waiting Time
One of the issues that plague passport offices is the waiting time to acquire passports. This is one anomaly that Adesokan was bent on tackling. Commending the NIS comptroller general's efforts to clear the backlog, she said at Festac Passport Office, staff worked day and night to ensure that everything was covered.
At the moment, she said there are no more issues of backlog. She, however, added that if there are issues of backlog, it would be because the applicant's documents were not complete.
Sustaining the Tempo
It's one thing to start and another to sustain the tempo. On this, Adesokan said: "If you are running and you don’t have people running after you with the same vision, the moment you’re out of the system, it’s not sustained anymore."
"In fact, today," she stated, "I am meeting with the management team to appreciate them for that laudable experience. It has brought attraction to Festac. Just do your little bit and let it be growing but don’t be there always allow the younger generation of the service. If you check my comptroller general, all the reforms he did, he invested so much in training officers."
Finding Balance as a Career Woman
As expected for any career woman, balancing the job and family life requires great care. For Adesokan, this rings true. "I have a very great family, and one of the areas of my strength in this job is my husband. Anything that has to do with my work and career, he’s 101 per cent behind me," she revealed.
At the end of the meeting, one thing was quite clear: Adesokan is service-driven. Her mantra has always been to ensure lives are touched, and this she has done at the FESTAC Passport Office.
"Of what use will you have in life passing through this place, after 35 years, and nobody can say that you have impacted them, so I am driven by a lifestyle of impact that gives me joy," she said. "When I saw people crying and smiling yesterday when we gave them their passports, that motivates me more".
When I came in here, I was given a mandate, and one of the mandates is to ensure that officers are well-trained in the vision of the service. The service has some tenets adopted by the comptroller general, and he wanted to spread it around. Not just passport offices but also at the airport