The Minister of Interior Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, and also Chairman, Civil Defence, Fire and Immigration Service Board, declared that there is no shortage of passport booklet anywhere in the world, hence that of Nigeria should not be different.
The Minister made the declaration on Wednesday in Abuja, while decorating the newly recognized acting Comptroller General of the Nigerian Immigration Service, Alhaji Idris Isa Jere, where he emphatically stated that passport booklet were not in short supply world over.
He urged Nigerians, both home and in diaspora to always follow the right channel in the process of acquiring international passport through the available online platform.
He reiterated that patronising touts and racketeers in acquiring passport would only leads to delay and extortion of prospective applicants.
Aregbesola further explained reasons behind some applicants getting long appointment dates, “Depending on the volume of applicants in your chosen station, your appointment period can be short or long. For example, if you’re in Lagos, Ikoyi passport office has the highest volume of passport seekers in Nigeria, it is almost 50 percent of the entire population of applicants in Nigeria. If you pick Ikoyi, you might have three months waiting period to have your data captured and other enrollment requirements, whereas it is not so in other places.”
Aregbesola, charged Idris Jere to find a lasting solution to the difficulties Nigerians go through in the issuance of passport, stressing that President Muhammadu Buhari was concerned about the difficulties Nigerians in diaspora faced in obtaining Nigerian passport.
Aregbesola said, “I received a message from the president at FEC today which I want to make public. The president is concern with the report coming from overseas on the difficulty of getting a Nigerian passport. The challenges are there not because of the lack of concern.
“Second, international visitors to Nigeria and even Nigerians who have the fortune of being born outside the country and therefore need to have a Nigerian passport before they can come into the country because they couldn’t get and want to come home through the visa on arrival platform find it difficult to process this effectively and seamlessly. We can’t afford to have these challenges with our people in diaspora.”
He further said to the acting Comptroller General of the Nigerian Immigration Service, “your new rank comes with more responsibilities, as such you must find a lasting solution in the issuance of passport, thereby making the process seamless.”
