Minister Of Interior Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo’s Nigeria Immigration Service Paid N4.37 Billion To Iris Smart Technologies Limited For 300,000 Passport Booklets Outside The Subsisting Contract The Ministry Of Interior Already Held With The Same Company

N4,372,092,264 left the Nigeria Immigration Service on March 14, 2024, paid to Iris Smart Technologies Limited for the supply of 300,000 e-passport booklets. The payment records examined by SecretsReporters state the purpose of the transaction in the Service’s own description: the supply was made “exclusive of the subsisting contract between the Ministry of Interior and ISTL.”

The Ministry of Interior already held a standing contract with the company. This payment was booked outside it.

Read Also: Interior Minister Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo Pays Hundreds of Millions To Unnamed Vendors Without Competition

Iris Smart Technologies Limited is not a briefcase company. It is registered with the Corporate Affairs Commission as RC 480978, incorporated in 2003, with active status. It has held the federal government’s passport production mandate since 2007, when it took over booklet production from a Malaysian company under an agreement with the Nigeria Security Printing and Minting Company. Its managing director, Yinka Fisher, has appeared in press reports on the passport business, and the company appeared before the House of Representatives ad hoc committee on passport domestication in 2023.

The payment records name no procurement method behind the separate supply, no competitive bidding and no Bureau of Public Procurement no-objection. The Public Procurement Act 2007 makes open competition the default for federal procurements. The supply was booked outside the subsisting contract between the Ministry of Interior and the same company, and the records carry no process that produced the separate deal.

The company holds sole control of the Country Signing Certification Authority and the passport-holder database, a concentration that officers of the Immigration Service themselves called a national-security risk in 2017, while the actual booklet printing is subcontracted to its Malaysian parent, Iris Corporation Berhad. Seventeen years on one mandate has made the company inseparable from the system it serves.

The payment was made under the watch of the Minister of Interior, Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, who took office in August 2023.