The Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) has attributed the scarcity of international passport booklets being experienced in the country to lack of access to foreign currency.
Idris Jere, Comptroller-general of the NIS who spoke at a public hearing organized by an ad-hoc committee of the house of representatives, revealed that the booklets are imported.
He said;
“The shortage is caused by the foreign exchange regulation policy of the government and CBN’s refusal to grant access to forex for importation of the booklets.
“We generate forex from the sale of passports but we do not have access to buy the same booklet and that is a challenge for NIS.
“The factors responsible for the scarcity of passports include the inability to set up passport producing factory in Nigeria as its production is done abroad.
“The major seven components used for producing passports are sold in the international market and the assemblage and production are done in Malaysia.”
Interestingly, this is coming after Nigeria’s Minister of Interior, Rauf Aregbesola on Tuesday, April 2, stated that the NIS had never at any given time, experienced shortage of passport booklets, blaming a few corrupt officials for undermining efforts of the NIS at sanitising the passport application process.
Aregbesola while inaugurating the NIS passport front office in Oyo Town had been quoted saying;
“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,” he concluded.
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