Reps move to stop scarcity of International passport
The House of Representatives has directed the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) to issue International Passport to Nigerians who have applied, paid, and have been captured but are yet to be issued their booklets within 72 hours.
This came following a motion brought up by Hon. Ugonna Ozurigbo, calling for an end to the perennial scarcity of booklets for the production of Nigeria’s international passport.
The house urged the Federal Ministry of Interior and the NIS to review its Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Nigerian Security Printing and Minting Company Plc and IRIS Smart Technologies Ltd with a view to boosting capacity and development of more Passport booklet production lines, ensuring better service delivery and that Nigerians get their international passports within 24 hours
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Its committees on Interior and Foreign Affairs have been mandated to ensure compliance and report back within four (4) weeks.
Ozurigbo expressed concern that “most Nigerians who have applied for International Passports and fulfilled all the requirements are constrained to wait endlessly for their International Passports, which ordinarily takes less than 48 hours to be issued, a situation that is causing untold hardship on Nigerians with urgent needs to travel out of the country.”
According to him, “Nigerians who are on medical referrals outside the country are developing needless health complications while waiting for their Passports to be issued while those for urgent business trips, conferences, etc. have missed rewarding business opportunities due to the unavailability of passport booklets to enable them to travel.”
“Nigerians in the diaspora are experiencing undue delays due to the scarcity and the situation is fast breeding a class of Passport racketeers who extort innocent citizens with the promise to assist them to secure International Passports on time” He said.
