The House of Representatives has condemned the scarcity of Nigerian international passport and has asked the Federal Government to devise sustainable means to ensure nationwide availability.
It mandated its Committee on Interior to interface with Ministry of Interior and Immigration Service to determine the cause of the scarcity, recommend ways of reversing the trend and report to the House within three weeks.
The decision of the House followed the adoption of a motion by Ayodeji Adebayo (APC, Lagos), who said the Federal Government should address challenges being faced by the supplier of the passport booklets.
The lawmaker regretted that acute shortage of Nigerian passport booklets is causing a lot of hardships on citizens wishing to acquire passports, leading to long queues at Immigration offices and increased patronage of touts.
In his contribution, Johnson Agboneiyma (PDP, Delta) said: “We live in a country where everything goes. In Nigeria, we create artificial scarcity so that agencies will make more money. In Nigeria even foreigners acquire international passport without due process.”
The motion was unanimously adopted after it was put to a voice vote by the Speaker, Yakubu Dogara.
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