THE Minister of Interior, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, has stated that a few corrupt officials of the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) were undermining its efforts at sanitising process and bringing integrity to passports application.

Aregbesola, who said this in Oyo town, while inaugurating the NIS Passports Front Office in the town on Tuesday, May 2, saying the NIS did not, at any given time, experience shortage of passport booklets, insisting: “It was a lie and an excuse by few corrupt officials of the Service to extort the applicants.”

The minister added: “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 process and bringing integrity to passports application.

“These unscrupulous people are making the situation difficult by the day and if people did not tolerate them, they will not exist again.

“They are the ones spreading the rumour that there is no booklets 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, however, appealed to Nigerians to stop patronising touts and report any NIS officials manipulating applicants for money.

He insisted that the NIS has been improving on its services, saying only a few countries could boast of the type of Nigeria passport, which he said “is one of the best in the world.”

The minister said the challenges currently facing the NIS included dearth of offices to enrol applicants for data capturing, but assured that the challenges were gradually been tackled, especially with the construction of more passports front offices.

Aregbesola said the inauguration of the new office in Oyo town would reduce the congestion in Ibadan centre, stating that about 5,000 applicants waiting for data capturing in Ibadan centre would be offloaded to the new centre to reduce the challenge of waiting period of data capturing by applicants.

“There is a limit to the number of applicants any passport office can attend to in a day, thus making it impossible to urgently attend to all the applicants necessitating the long waiting period.

“Ibadan can only attend to 450 applicants in a day and that is why we need several locations like this one in Oyo,” he said.

The minister said getting an international passport was the right of all Nigerians in and those outside the country, assuring them that the NIS would not relent in its mandate of providing passports to all Nigerians.

Earlier, the NIS Comptroller in Oyo State, Mohammed Umar, said the new passport office would be an additional centre to that of Ibadan Centre, which had been serving people of the state and its environs for decades and has been overstressed due to high numbers of passport applicants.