Nigeria Immigrations Service has recovered the sum of N88 million as overpayments by those seeking to acquire the new e-passport and returned the money to their rightful owners.

Executive Vice-Chairman of National eGovernment Strategies, NeGSt, Dr Olu Agunloye, told journalists in Abuja that this recovery was part of the dividends of the eGovernment initiative but that NeGSt was still grappling with the challenge of identifying the real persons that made the overpayment. He stated that banks have been advised to refund all overpayments discovered.
According to him, “the e-Immigration has become so successful that even Asians are coming to see what is going on here. There are still little things to fine tune like double payment.

The Comptroller General said that there were double payment of about N88million as at December and it has been refunded, but it is the refund payment we are working on as people who are fraudulent could come up to claim a refund. It has been made clear to the banks that they should refund all double payments”.

The CG equally stated that achieving vision 2020 would remain a dream without the full implementation of the e-Government project and expressed the need to merge the vision 2020 and 7point agenda and tie them to eGovernance. “Because e-Government is the only vehicle to make governance effective, efficient, increase the capacity of government and to make it people centred.”

The Comptroller General continued, “it will then allow government to propel productivity within this whole system as well as productivity in the economy. Without productivity in the country you cannot have economic growth.

It is only economic growth that can make Nigeria competitive enough to overtake 21 countries. IMF has said that Nigeria is number 41 on the list and for us to move from 41 to 20 in 11 years time we must not use juju but ensure that our economy has become competitive on the global scale. That means that the industry in Nigeria must produce things that will compete on the international level and this will be easier when ICTs are deployed”.

The said NeGSt has successfully completed eRegisteration of teachers, eNYSC among others but intend to introduce the eLGAs, ePrimary schools and eParliament for Nigerian legislators.