Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka has tasked the federal government on the efficient management of the Nigeria International Travel Portal following the failure to obtain a travel permit on a recent return trip to Nigeria.
The portal nitp.ncdc.gov.ng is a mandatory website for all travelling passengers to Nigeria to visit and obtain the permit to travel. It was established in compliance with international travel protocol in response to the COVD-19 pandemic.
All travellers are expected to present a copy of the travel permit at the point of boarding. After a series of complaints in its earlier days, advance payment for post-arrival COVID-19 test was no longer required to obtain the permit.
But in his recent engagement with the online portal, Soyinka discovered that the questionnaire that precedes the process of obtaining the permit online is very difficult and has left many travellers including Nigerians stranded at international airports.
Speaking at a press briefing in Lagos yesterday, Soyinka bemoaned the lack of efficient service on the part of those managing the online travel portal.
“I don’t think it should be more
difficult to enter your country than to leave until recently. Not being able to
return to your own country is a kind of banishment. It is a feudal punishment
that doesn’t belong to this modern age,” he said.
He lamented how the breakdown of the
travel portal had taken its toll on travellers citing two instances in which he
had missed his flights to Nigeria.
According to him, on the last
occasion, he was at the Air France desk where he was told he would not be
allowed to board without the travel permit.
He had attempted to obtain it the
previous day but could not due to system error.
“Between 10am and 2pm, we kept
working to get the travel permit. Some people changed the password on their
computers for me to access the portal. There were six Air France staff trying
to help me get the permit to get into Nigeria.
“We got the receipt of payment
for the post-arrival test but did not get the permit to enter Nigeria which has
a barcode. The process itself is remarkable. I don’t believe that the Ministry
of Health or the Director of the relevant authorities created the questionnaire
where majority of the questions have nothing to do with COVID-19”
Soyinka charged the Ministry of Health
and the Ministry of Internal Affairs to provide an alternative to tackle the
challenge of a systematic error with the portal.
“Why
should we be punished because some people are technologically inefficient and
yet they are imposing this technological requirement on passengers? It is not a
pleasant sight to see your fellow Nigerian lying on couches, trapped in limbo?
That’s wrong. Whoever is in charge should proceed to design something that is
easier for humanity to fulfil and also to have a back-up situation. When
technology breaks down, human intelligence should come to the rescue.”
