The Ministry of Internal Affairs has said at least 10,000 foreigners have been found with genuine Ugandan national IDs seeking to use them to acquire the country’s passports.
Addressing journalists on Monday, Internal Affairs spokesperson, Simon Mundeyi said in the past few month, they have confiscated the national IDs got from these foreigners and returned to National Identification and Registration Authority(NIRA) for cancellation.
“We have over 10,000 national IDs issued to some of these people who don’t qualify to get them.We confiscated 10,000 of them and we have been sending these to NIRA to see to it those national IDs are cancelled,” Mundeyi said.
“We have realized that at the time the country started issuing national IDs, there was no national data bank and therefore whoever came with any sort of information was issued with a national ID. We have however got many of these people and have continuously handed them over to NIRA with other national IDs cancelled and others are in the process of cancelling them.”
He said the 10,000 have been confiscated since 2014.
Mad dash for Ugandan passports
The Ministry of Internal Affairs said the development has been exacerbated by a mad dash by foreigners to acquire Ugandan passports for their own selfish benefits.
“We have seen a big number of foreigners trying to acquire Ugandan passports. Some of these want to come here to use fraudulently means to acquire our passport which is much sought after world over now that it is digital,” Mundeyi said.
He said last week, three foreigners including two Nigerians and a Congolese national were found trying to acquire Ugandan passports using the country’s national IDs.
“One Nigerian Kidebyere Okafor was using a national ID under the names Ashraf Kakaire as he pretended to be a Musoga but when we subjected him to interview in Lusoga, he didn’t know anything. We took him to court and he confessed and pleaded guilty,” Mundeyi said.
He said that another Nigerian and Congolese refugee all had genuine Ugandan national IDs that they sought to use to acquire the country’s passports.
“The national IDs they had were genuinely issued but using fraudulently issued documents like LC letters. The number of foreigners with Ugandan national IDs has continued to increase and we are worried this would go up towards the 2026 elections.”
In the past, several foreigners, especially those involved in drug trafficking have been found with Ugandan passports that they use to commit crimes.
Ugandan passports are sought after by the drug traffickers, especially those from Nigeria so as to conceal their real identities.
With Nigeria being red flagged over drug trafficking, many of these criminals run to Uganda where they are helped by their local agents who bribe Ugandan immigration officers and get passports.
For example, countries like China and the US are very strict on Nigerians entering their country.
Now that Nigerians and Ugandans almost resemble each other, it is easy for the traffickers to use Ugandan passports to their work
