Integrity Reporter can report that all is not well at the Ikoyi Passport Office if alleged administrative lapses of the Passport Control Officer (CPO) Abudlquadry Garo is anything to go by.
It was gathered that the hitherto respected Ikoyi Passport Office is gradually losing its image due to the inefficient and uncoordinated operations since Garo was posted to the Office.
Garo, it was gathered, managed to find himself heading the lucrative Ikoyi Passport Office due to his closeness to Muhammed Babandede, MFR (Comptroller-General Immigration Service – CGIS). He is said to be an in-law to Babandede and he is known to be a Hausa-Fulani officer.
It was reported that his administration has consistently and blindly favoured staff who are of Hausa-Fulani descent with disregard to competency and capability. Garo had since scrapped most sections created by the erstwhile Passport Control Officer, which the former PCO created to ease operations at the Ikoyi Passport Office. This has led to outsider, especially Nigerians who have been visiting Ikoyi Passport Office for one service or the other to complain that ‘is this not Ikoyi Passport Office we knew before now?’
An every Monday staff meeting which was being used to map out weekly operation had been cancelled by Garo.
“Ikoyi Passport Office has now become a shadow of itself since this man came in. The staff morale is down because this man has been promoting ethnicity since he took over from the former PCO. He has changed a lot of things without considering their usefulness for effective service delivery,” a staff who pleaded anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the issue confided in Integrity Reporter.
A visitor to Ikoyi Passport Office, an international passport applicant who came to renew her passport told Integrity Reporter that the Honourable Minister of the Interior, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola and the CGIS must know what is happening at the Ikoyi Passport Office before the place is run aground by the incompetent PCO.
“Things have completely changed here. This is not Ikoyi Passport Office I knew when last I visited here to obtain my international passport. I hope the authorities do something on this administrative lapses here,” the visitor said.
