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Fed Govt goes tough on passport racketeering
By Blessing Olaifa, Abuja
The Federal Government on Thursday unveiled a new dawn regarding international passports processing, disclosing that it will install body cameras on security operatives to forestall all forms of racketeering at passports offices.
Minister of Interior Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, who announced the policy, said touting, solicitations, extortion, hoarding and inflation of the costs of obtaining passports would be met with serious punishment by the government.
Aregbesola sounded the warnings to officers and men of the Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS) at the Service Headquarters in Abuja during the meeting of the Comptroller-General of Immigration with Passports Officers and Attaches in Missions.
The minister, who enumerated the challenges facing the Service especially “shortage of booklets, touting, racketeering, inflating the cost, and passports being issued to ineligible persons, “ noted that it would no longer be business as usual again in all passports desks.
Aregbesola said: “We are turning round the entire passport application process in a way that is easy, seamless, transparent and will accord human dignity to applicants and fulfil citizenship integrity.
“Therefore, I am declaring a zero-tolerance stance to all forms of touting. No applicant will be made to pay any illegitimate fees.
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“We are going to embed security operatives – seen and unseen – in all our passport offices. They will wear body cameras. They will detect and report any form of solicitations, inflation, improper communications, extortion, diversion, hoarding and other corrupt practices.
“Those caught will be dealt with according to the law. An ombudsman will also be created for members of the public to receive complaints and reports on officers trying to deviate from prescribed guidelines and subversion of the process.
“Two, we have created special centres for expedited services. These special centres will run on public-private partnership basis.
“This has already taken off in Abuja and 10 more will be opened in coming weeks as more of such centres will be opened all over the country. Our goal is to have one in each local government, university campuses, institutions of higher learning and other places.
“Three, a timeline will be fixed for every application i.e., a collection date. This will be six weeks, comparable to what obtains in other countries. This is to allow for enough time to investigate and validate personal information supplied by the applicants.
“What we are driving at is the peace of mind that comes from assurance of certainty. If there are circumstances that will make the date to change, it will be communicated to the applicant one week before the collection date.
“Fourth, applicants will have no basis for further communication with officers, other than to complete their application process and leave the venue.
“The date for the collection of their passports or any challenge to the application will be communicated to them. The technology for the efficient running of this system has been acquired and will be deployed.
“Fifth, we are publishing on our website the list of the backlog of passports that are ready, which are yet to be collected by the owners. They will be required to go to the state commands to collect them.
“With these changes, it is my firm belief that we will arrive at a new dawn in passport application processing.”
