A prosecution witness in the ongoing trial of Professor Moke Ozekhome and one other before the High Court of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) has said the Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS) cannot issue passports that do not meet the standards set by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO).
Ozekhome and Ponfa Useni, a son of the late General Jeremiah Useni, a military-era FCT Minister, are being prosecuted by the Office of the Attorney-General of the Federation (OAGF) on a 12-count charge bordering on forgery and impersonation.
The prosecution alleged, among others, that both Ozekhome and Ponfa Useini conspired in 2020 and made ‘a false Nigerian International Passport No. A07535463 with the name Shani Tali.
While being cross-examined on Monday by Useni’s lawyer, F.R. Onoja (SAN), the witness, Bamaiyi Haruna Mairiga, insisted on the distinction he made between a forged document and a counterfeit document during his evidence-in-chief on June 29.
The witness, who said he stood by that distinction, added that he concluded the disputed passport’s data page was forged to bear Shani Tali.
He said, ‘My conclusion is that the data page of passport A07535463 is forged to bear Shani Tali as the holder of the passport.
‘The reason for this is that ICAO has set the standard for forged character between the visual character and machine-readable character recognition.
‘What I am saying is that passport number A07535463, date of birth 2nd February, 1973 and expiry date 1st July, 2026 all failed the ICAO optical character recognition test. Hence, I conclude it was forged to reflect Shani Tali as the holder.
‘The Nigerian Immigration Service cannot issue a document that does not meet ICAO standards for passport recognition.’
Mairiga, the second prosecution witness (PW2), said the data page of a passport could be counterfeited, and entries on the page could also be altered and referred to as forged.
The witness said the Nigerian passport, which he accepted was a continuous document, was machine-readable.
Mairiga recalled that in conducting forensic analysis of the disputed passport, he consulted the NIS E-passport verification system portal, which he said was designed to check for the authenticity of every Nigerian passport.
PW2 added that he did not refer to the outcome of the consultation with the NIS E-passport verification system portal in his forensic analysis report of the disputed passport, which was earlier tendered as Exhibit P7a.
He said, ‘In my report, I did not reference the outcome of the consultation with the Nigerian Immigration Service E-passport verification system portal. The reason is that ICAO set a standard for all its 193 members. ICAO is superior to NIS.’
While being cross-examined by Tayo Oyetibo (SAN), Ozekhome’s lawyer, Mairiga said he was specifically asked to conduct a forensic analysis of the disputed passport to check whether the content of the visual zone matched the machine zone.
Mairiga said the passport in question failed all elements required to ascertain an authentic passport: the passport number, the date of birth of the holder, and the date of expiry of the passport.
The PW2 said the A series of the Nigeria E-passport, at the inception, did not carry the National Identification Number (NIN), adding that when the A series passport was run on the ICAO passport document checker with passport number or NIN, it usually returned a pass.
He added, ‘When a data page is subjected to the ICAO E-passport document reader, what the system does is that it captures every data in that data page. It shows the issuing country and also the sex, surname, given name and nationality of the holder.
‘However, the key elements set aside for checking substitution of data or forgery of data are simply the date of expiry, passport number and date of birth,’ the PW2 told the court.
At the conclusion of the cross-examination session, Justice Chizoba Oji postponed the further hearing till Tuesday (today).