The Federal High Court in Abuja has scheduled a hearing for March 7 on a suit filed by Lagos‑based woman Benita Ezemezu, who alleges that the Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS) delayed the issuance of her passport. The Minister of Interior, Rauf Aregbesola, is also named as a defendant. The case will be heard before Justice J.K. Omotosho.
In her original summons, Ezemezu contended that after paying the statutory fees and completing biometric verification, the NIS failed to issue her passport for more than 14 weeks. She warned that this delay could jeopardize an all‑expense‑paid trip to the United States, where she is in the final stage of consideration by the U.S. Embassy for the 2023 cohort of the highly competitive Young African Leaders Initiative Mandela Washington Fellowship.
Ezemezu cited a media report in which the second respondent, Aregbesola, announced that Nigerian passports would be processed and issued within six weeks. She later discovered that the NIS had published the same six‑week timeline on its official website. Because her passport was not issued, she missed an event in Lusaka, Zambia, for which her organization had already paid accommodation, flight and other expenses.
She further explained that on 21 November, four days after the six‑week period expired from the date of her biometric capture, she visited the passport division at the NIS headquarters to lodge a complaint about the non‑issuance. During an interaction with an NIS official at the head office, she was repeatedly told that, because she was “trying to be smart” and following due process, her application would not be processed for another six months unless she paid a bribe to an officer to “help facilitate the application.”
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