The Minister of Interior, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, has warned international passport applicants against patronizing racketeers to avoid delay in getting the documents, and extortion.
Aregbesola made the declaration Thursday, 16 June, in Abuja, while decorating the acting Comptroller General of the Nigerian Immigration Service, NIS, Alhaji Idris Isa Jere, with the rank of Comptroller General.
TheFact Daily reports that, according to the Minister, who is also the Chairman, Civil Defence, Correctional, Fire and Immigration Services Board, CDCFIB, with the ongoing new passport reform at the NIS, passport booklet shortage has become a thing of the past, as well as other bottlenecks previously encountered in the passport application process.
At the decoration ceremony, Aregbesola, while assuring that the NIS would do everything possible to provide the important travel document to Nigerians desirous of it, urged Nigerians, both at home and in the diaspora, to always follow the right channel in the process of acquiring passports through the official online platform.
The Minister, also stated that even though the Immigration Boss had been decorated, he would still be referred to as ‘acting’ according to the terms of his appointment approved by President Muhammadu Buhari.
He then charged the Acting CG to find lasting solutions 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 passports.
