No fewer than 80 officers and men of the Nigerian Immigration Service have gone on trial for indulging in the collection of illegal fees for the issuance of new passports and renewal of old ones.
\nThe Service Public Relations Officer, Comptroller of Immigration, Mr Tony Akuneme, who disclosed this in an interview with The Tide source in Abuja, yesterday, also indicated that eight other officers have been dismissed from service for the same offence in the last one year.
\nHe said the disciplinary measures under the passport reform, were part of the three-point agenda of the present Comptroller General, NIS, Isah Jere, when he came on board.
\nAkuneme also said that the CG\u2019s three-point agenda includes reforming passport issuance, tightening border security and improving the welfare of NIS officers.
\nAccording to him, Jere has done this to the best of his ability in the last one year plus, and that is what has led to most applicants booking online for passports.
\n\u201cWe have tried as much as possible to eliminate third parties so that if you really want, you can process the application of your passport from the comfort of your room on your laptop, android phones and you can pay online.
\n\u201cYou don\u2019t really need anybody whether immigration officers or agents which we usually call touts. They have upgraded and become agents. They are still third parties.
\n\u201cThe problem we have is the use of third parties because no matter how much reform you put in, you will always see a learned and civilised person using a third party to process his or her application.
\n\u201cAnd one thing they don\u2019t understand is that third parties don\u2019t have an idea of the information entered into your application. This can result in somebody having issues with his\/her National Identification Number (NIN),\u201d he said.
\nThe NIS spokesman said that the CG has vowed to discipline officers who go out of their way to try to either engage or sabotage the reform process.
\n\u201cWe have continued to punish NIS officers and men who try to assist people for a fee. You can assist people genuinely but not extort from them.
\n\u201cWe are committed to curbing corruption and other illicit acts in the service. You will appreciate the fact that if nothing else, the level of awareness has increased in the last few months.
\n\u201cDon\u2019t patronise agents, fill your forms yourself. We have officers watching and these agents know they are being watched.
\n\u201cWhen they take money from you, tell us. If we don\u2019t take action, tell the world,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
No fewer than 80 officers and men of the Nigerian Immigration Service have gone on trial for indulging in the collection of illegal fees for the issuance of new passports and renewal of old ones. The Service Public Relations Officer, Comptroller of Immigration, Mr Tony Akuneme, who disclosed this in an interview with The Tide […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":297997,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[76],"tags":[688],"class_list":["post-317225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","tag-front-pix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=317225"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317225\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":317233,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317225\/revisions\/317233"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/297997"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=317225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=317225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=317225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}