Rauf Aregbesola, minister of interior, on Monday,
inaugurated a passport front office in the Alimosho area of Lagos.
The office was established by the Nigeria Immigration
Service (NIS) to further ease application, processing, and collection of the
Nigerian international passport.
In a statement by Anthony Akuneme, NIS public relations
officer, Aregbesola said no less than additional 14 passport front offices
would be created in Lagos because the state accounts for 50 percent of all
applications across the country.
Speaking further on the significance, the minister said the
office will “address shortage gap” and decongest traffic at the Ikoyi, Festac
and Alausa centres, adding that the federal government may consider a
public-private partnership arrangement for more passport front offices in the
state.
“We certainly need
more of this in Lagos. This is because half of all passport applications are
made in Lagos. At no time are less than 100,000 applicants from Lagos on the
NIS portal applying for passports,” he said.
“We will therefore need not less than 15 of these front
offices in Lagos alone, to be able to cut the application waiting period to one
week.
“Due to funding constraints, the government might consider
public-private partnership arrangement to set up more passport front offices as
part of other steps to deal with the challenges in urban centres where
applications for passports are unusually high.”
On his part, Jere Idris, comptroller-general of the Nigeria
Immigration Service (NIS), described the office as a “legacy project” that will
bring efficient services to Lagos and its environs.
“There is a need to continue to expand the infrastructure
like what we are doing here today,” he said.
“We are privileged to be witnessing the commissioning and
take-off of this legacy project by the honourable minister of interior, Rauf
Aregbosola, the purpose of which is to decongest traffic at the Ikoyi, Festac,
and Alausa passport offices and bring services closer to indigenes of the
largest local government area in Lagos state and its environs.
“The passport office remains a no-go-area for touts,
passport racketeers, fake breeder documents harvesters and all sorts of
undesirable elements.
“I wish to warn that the long arm of the law and its full
force will be visited on any person who by an act of commission or omission
infringes on the passport offences as stipulated in section 10(1a-h) of the
Immigration Act, 2015.”
The event also featured the inauguration of the
newly-constructed Lagos command headquarters of the NIS at the Alagbon close,
Ikoyi.
Advertise on NigerianEye.com to reach thousands of our daily users
No comments
Post a Comment
Kindly drop a comment below.
(Comments are moderated. Clean comments will be approved immediately)
Advert Enquires - Reach out to us at NigerianEye@gmail.com