Retrieval of Diplomatic Passports

The federal government directed the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) last week to retrieve all valid diplomatic and official passports from holders who are no longer entitled to carry them. Ministry of Interior Permanent Secretary, Alhaji Yusuf Isiaka, said the federal government had discovered that some Nigerians who were not eligible to the documents were in their possession.

A statement from the ministry noted that the directive was in line with “the federal government’s determination to protect and promote Nigeria’s integrity in the comity of nations.” The directive couldn’t have come at a better time given the abuses to which the red and blue passports have been subjected over the last 16 years.

Traditionally, a diplomatic passport is an official document issued to professional diplomats and ambassadors by their home governments to facilitate their work in a foreign country. The issuance of the document is guided by rules under the 1815 Congress of Vienna that formalised the exchange of diplomatic agents among nations.

These rules are stringent and restrict the issuance of the document only to professional diplomats who are representatives of their heads of government. Those issued the document are assumed to be people of impeachable character and integrity. Same for holders of the official passport, issued to individuals on official assignments for a sovereign nation.

Unfortunately, in Nigeria these vital documents do not do what they are meant for. Over the year there has been a proliferation of diplomatic and official passports such that all manner of people, who are by no means entitled, carry them, and subject them to wanton abuse.

What was seen as a privilege, extended temporarily to diplomatic staff, who were obliged to promptly return the documents on leaving service, became a bonanza enjoyed illegally by all and sundry, including politicians, businessmen and women, clerics, traditional rulers and even mistresses.

The unwieldy number of diplomatic and official passport holders has exposed Nigeria to some dangers because some of these people who have no business carrying either document can use them to engage in criminal activities capable of denting the country’s image abroad. This is why they must be urgently retrieved, while effort must be made to streamline the number eligible holders.

In the not too distant past, there were instances where some state governors, holders of the diplomatic passports, were arrested abroad for conduct incompatible with holders of such documents. A minister was at one time delayed at an airport in the USA for carrying $250,000 cash; he had a diplomatic passport, a symbol of integrity and honour.

There are many former officials with the red and green passports which have not yet expired, like former state governors and ministers, who deliberately refused to submit the documents after serving their terms, and are now abroad, using them illegally.

Apart from those who have left public service but are still holding on to their diplomatic and official passports, there are also those who have been redeployed to departments where they no longer need the documents, and can use them to commit crimes capable of bringing the nation to disrepute, hence the urgent need to recover the passports.

Unfortunately, the first abusers of the passports are the issuing authority, the NIS, and its officers, who indiscriminately issue the documents to all manner of people, including top government officials and politicians in elective or appointive offices, who are neither on diplomatic nor official assignments. The situation is such that some embassies treat Nigeria’s red and blue passports with the same disdain they treat, the green, general passport.

It is therefore not enough to ask the NIS to retrieve diplomatic and official passports from ineligible holders, something the organisation ought to have done without prompting. The federal government must make conscious efforts to comply with the Vienna Convention by withdrawing the documents from ineligible people who fraudulently hold them.

Government must also put measures in place to ensure the immediate retrieval of these documents as soon as the beneficiaries cease to perform the duties for which they were issued the passports. This will help restore the dignity of the diplomatic and official passports and earn Nigeria respect among the comity of nations.