Mohammed Lawal, an Abuja-based freelance journalist, has detailed how “acts of incompetence” by officers of the Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS) cost him a place in the United States for the 2022 Mandela Washington Fellowship.

Lawal equally accused the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) of playing a part in the process that led to revocation of his fellowship offer.

The journalist told FIJ that his passport expired two years ago and he did not renew it until the fellowship’s organisers shortlisted him for an interview in February.

“When I went for the renewal of my passport at the headquarters in Abuja, the NIS officials detected some biometric errors, like name arrangement in my NIN data. So, they needed to harmonise my NIN data to tally with the one on the NIS database,” he said. 

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“Before they could harmonise that, I had to write a formal letter to the NIMC. After writing it, the next step was to take it to the Assistant Control General of Immigration (ACG).”

The journalist said he notified the NIS officials that he was running out of time because of the passport submission deadline by the organisers, but they did nothing on it.

Lawal said after it took almost two months before he could finally get approval from the ACG’s office. He also stated that the NIS subjected him to administrative bureaucracy that cost him another one month, while he ran out of time.

“The next stage was the implementation and production stage, which, according to them, should not take more than one or two hours. Later, they forwarded it to another section within the production realm,” Lawal said.

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He said the NIS would later transfer his file to the office of IRIS Smart Technology, a foreign ICT technical affiliate with NIS, but nothing significant happened to his request.

“Two weeks later, IRIS returned my file, saying the document in my file did not tally with my NIN data. This was after I wrote a letter to that effect,” Lawal said.

“An insider in the NIS told me that they checked the NIS database and confirmed my details tallied. Sadly, by the time they returned the file to the IRIS with a printout of the evidence, they said the NIMC server was down. This went on for three days.”

The journalist said a top female NIS official who later heard of his predicament intervened and ordered that his file be brought to her.

“Despite their bosses’ intervention, the NIMC staff said they could not find my file,” Lawal said.

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During this period. Lawal said Mandela Washington had already given him two deadline extensions.

He said the third deadline he was given by the fellowship expired on April 20.

“After the third deadline, they recoupled my file. This recoupling took them almost three days. The day they took the recoupled file to the Special Assistant to the Assistant Comptroller of Immigration, the Mandela Washington emailed me that they had revoked my admission,” he said.

“They said they revoked my admission for failure to submit my passport. This was how I lost this golden opportunity, all because of the NIS.”

FIJ made several phone calls to Amos Okpu, the NIS Spokesperson, but he did not answer them. He had also not replied to a text message sent to him at press time.