Minister of Interior, Rauf Aregbesola, has disclosed that officers of the Nigeria Immigration Service will start wearing body cameras to rid of touts in the system.
Truetells Nigeria reports that the minister in a series of tweets via his Twitter handle on Friday said the move was to permanently curb the complaints of difficulty in obtaining Passports from the NIS.
He explained that the cameras will detect and report any form of solicitations, inflation, improper communications, extortion, diversion, hoarding, and other corrupt practices. Those caught will be dealt with according to the law.
The minister added that the service will also be created for members of the public to receive complaints and reports on officers trying to deviate from prescribed guidelines and subversion of the process.
He wrote: “I have declared a zero-tolerance stance to all forms of touting. No applicant will be made to pay any illegitimate fees.
“We are going to embed security operatives – seen and unseen – in all our passport offices. They will wear body cameras.
“It has become imperative that we review our operations and rejig our system, in order to be able to offer excellent services to our clients. We need to review a system from time to time to see if it helps best to serve and realise the objectives”.
The minister said that special centres have been created for expedited services, adding that the special centres will run on a public-private partnership basis.
On the issue of passport collection, he stated that a timeline for the collection of passports will be fixed for every application.
He added that six weeks will be set aside to allow for enough time to investigate, verify and validate personal information supplied by the applicants.
Aregbesola noted that applicants will have no basis for further communication with officers, other than to complete their application process and leave the venue.
The minister said the date for the collection of their passports or any challenge to the application will be communicated to them.
The minister further stated that the entire application process will become seamless, transparent and will accord human dignity to applicants and fulfill citizenship integrity.