Nigerian Flight Deck Travel and Business Reportage
NIGERIA Immigration Service (NIS), Murtala Muhammed International Airport (MMIA), Lagos Command has increased visa issuing centres from one to two with at least 20,000 visas being issued since June following the Executive Order issued on the ease of doing business in Nigeria.
This is just as the NIS has increased its immigration counters at the MMIA from three to eight.
Nigerianflightdeck.com learnt that top immigration echelon in Abuja ordered the service at the airport to increase the counters to two in order to facilitate movement of foreign investors into the country and abolish the usual man hour loss due to immigration processes.
Investigation by our correspondent revealed that visas are now issued to foreigners on arrival at both E and D wings of the airport from its initial D wing.
The issuing of visas on arrival, has reduced the number of foreigners going to the home offices of Nigeria abroad, as many of them now prefer to get their visas on arrival at the command.
It was gathered that the Comptroller General of Immigration, Mr. Muhammad Babandede, recently paid an unscheduled visit to the command to observe the implementation of the ease of doing business by the command and ordered them to improve on their relationship with travellers at the command.
Also, as part of the monitoring scheme, the command has tagged the counters of all its personnel at the airport.
Officers on duty at the MMIA, it was observed, has removable tag placed against its counter while attending to arriving or departing passengers.
Our correspondent also observed that all the counters for immigration processes for arriving passengers were tagged while the same was also done for outbound passengers.
FAAN’s source told our correspondent that Babandede ordered the latest move for proper identification of its officers especially those who have contact with passengers.
According to the source, NIS believed that with this move, it would be easier for passengers to properly identify any officer who requests for bribe from them and take the necessary step to report such officer to superior officers.
The source said: “Immigration boss ordered all the officers to tag their counters to check against corruption in the system and also key into the ease of doing business policy of the Federal Government
“Personally, I would say it is a good development as it will check against low level corruption among officers and also ease passenger facilitation.”
