Minister of Interior, Rauf Aregbesola has said that some corrupt officials are undermining the efforts of the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) at sanitising the passport application process.
The Minister made the claim in Oyo Town while inaugurating the NIS passport front office on Tuesday evening.
Aregbesola also stated that the NIS has not, at any given time, experienced shortage of passport booklets.
He added that excuse of passport shortage is a lie being circulated by a few corrupt officials of the service to extort the applicants.
“One of the challenges facing NIS as regards passports application are the few corrupt officials of the service who are undermining the efforts of the service at sanitising the process and bringing integrity to passports application.
“These unscrupulous people are making the situation difficult by the day. If people did not tolerate them, they will not exist again.
“They are the ones spreading the rumour that there is no booklet in order to continue to extort the applicants.
“We did not have shortage of booklets at any given time; we have enough booklets to meet the need of the people. There are more than enough booklets in our production schedule.”
Aregbesola who appealed to Nigerians to stop patronising the “louts” and report any NIS official extorting applicants for money, further disclosed that the NIS has improved its services, adding that only a few countries could boast of the type of passport Nigeria has, which he said “is one of the best in the world”.
