The Federal Government has debunked allegations that the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) is suffering from acute shortage of booklets for passports.
The Minister of Interior, Rauf Aregbesola, accused a few corrupt officials Service (NIS) of frustrating the process and spreading the rumour to shortchange the applicants.
The minister said that NIS did not, at any given time, experience a shortage of passport booklets, adding it was “a lie and an excuse by 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 the sanitizing 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 are no booklets to continue to extort the applicants.
“We did not have a 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 said.
He, however, appealed to Nigerians to stop patronising the touts and report any NIS officials manipulating applicants for money.
The minister said that NIS has been improving on its services, noting that only few countries could boast of the type of Nigeria passport, which he said “is one of the best in the world”.
