Has Aregbesola failed as minister?

By Ezekiel Adeniran

"It seems every agency under Aregbesola is lacklustre. Honestly, I am worried all Agencies under him are having issues."

Above were the words of a prominent Ijesha indigene, a former permanent secretary in the employ of Osun State government, some days ago when this writer telephoned to felicitate him on the birth of his grand-child. The statesman shared his displeasure concerning the leadership style Rauf Aregbesola, a fellow Ijesha, has put up since August 2019 when he was named the Minister of Interior.

Aregbesola is the political head of four key agencies viz: Nigerian Correctional ( Prisons) Service, Nigeria Immigration Service, Federal Fire Service and the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps. Regrettably, none of these agencies is inspiring, performance-wise.

BusinessDay's report of 16th December 2021 chronicled how obtaining a Nigerian travel passport has become a cesspool and an avenue for many Nigerian Immigration Service officials to peculate innocent citizens. The service of the agency has been marred by scarcity, racketeering and frivolous activities by some of the officials who have become irritatingly emboldened and now operate unrestrained because the leadership of the Nigerian Immigration Service, NIS, nay Ministry of Interior, have failed to rein them in.

In the words of a passport applicant, according to the report, "The first time I came for an international passport, I was asked to pay extra N20,000 and another N10,000; the exploitation was much; so, I just couldn’t go on."

Similar accounts, as above, abound.

Again, because of the leadership failure of Aregbesola and officers in the top echelon of the NIS, Nigerians have continued to face hardship in trying to renew or acquire the Nigeria’s passport booklets. So to address the problem of scarcity of travel passport in Nigeria, Aregbesola, in May this year, introduced a policy of decentralising passport issuance in the 774 local government areas in the country. The process started with inauguration of Passports Express Centre at Maitama District, Abuja. Passports, boasted the minister, would be available within 24 hours nationwide under the new Maitama Passport Express Centre (MPEC). But how effective this policy has been is yet to be seen because applicants still experience difficulties in obtaining their passports. Strangely, the Service continues to offer excuses to cover its failure. To the officials, the scarcity has been as a result of foreign exchange problem and of failure of applicants to follow due process!

Meanwhile, the passport scarcity is not peculiar to Nigeria-based applicants; their compatriots in foreign lands experience similar challenge. The PM News of 12th November 2021 quoted a Germany-based Victor Ojeabulu, Chairman, Nigerians in Diaspora Network, appealing to the Government of Nigeria to make passport booklets available because "many Nigerians were going through hell." According to him, women, in particular, were finding it difficult to get passports for their children.

The story is the same for Nigerians in Italy: they groan under the hardship the scarcity of passports has caused them. According to George Omo-Iduhon, "About 1.5 million Nigerians in Italy don’t have passports, even some of those that have been accepted by the Italian government have not been issued Nigerian passports which makes it difficult for them to work."

Omo-Iduhon, Chairman, Nigerians in Diaspora Organisation, Europe (NIDO-Europe), Italy Chapter, spoke with the News Agency of Nigeria on Monday, 27th December, 2021.

The Federal Fire Service, FFS, is another agency under the leadership of Aregbesola that is poorly run. A popular media personality, Toke Makinwa, once shared her experience with the Service after she placed an emergency call to its men over a fire incident in her house. Makinwa took to her Twitter page to express her disappointment after they showed up almost 20 hours late to the spot of the incident!

The Service provides shoddy job to Nigerians in spite its huge yearly allocation. Since assumption of office in 2015, the Buhari government has procured 141 modern fire-fighting trucks. The FFS could only boast of three rickety fire fighting trucks before this period. The previous interior ministers in the government of Buhari also saw to the increase in the staff strength of the fire-fighters from 600 to about 6,000. However, to what extent has the country beniftted from her investment in the fire service? For example in Q2 of 2021, the FFS received 638 distress calls in which 27 lives were lost and property estimated at N3 trillion destroyed. The performance statistics is unenticing.

Despite that, rather than setting his priority, Aregbesola insists on throwing himself around, revelling in absurdities and showmanship, including pushing for a legislation granting firefighters the power to bear arms to protect the firefighters from mob attacks. . . .

The other time also, the minister was reported to have left his base in Abuja for Taraba to commission just ONE truck meant for the Federal Fire Service. Abuja to Taraba, a trip of 568km, will take close to 10 hours by road. The minister, no doubt, would have lost quality hours, that would have been invested in resolving numerous challenges facing the ministry, owing to his poor judgement and lack of coordination.

Further, the minister, this November, was storied to have travelled to the United Kingdom to launch a new e-passport, an event that did not require his physical presence or that could have been conducted via Zoom.

Aregbesola, in the name of always wanting to be in the news, and perhaps for love of out-station allowance and estacodes, each day slides to vacuity. He is more concerned about optics and petty politics than result and profundity. Under him as the supervising minister for the Federal Fire Service, the performance of the Service remains an embarrassment to the administration of President Buhari.

Whereas the situation in the Fire Service is worrisome, it is more worrisome in the Civil Defence and the Correctional Service. In the last 12 months alone, at least 15 jailbreak incidents have been recorded. The fallout of the jailbreaks is that over 4,000 inmates are currently out of custody, a situation that has heightened the crime rate in the country. Imo governor, Hope Uzodimma said, "The evidence of activities of escaped inmates is manifested in what happened at Izombe community, where one of those who confronted the military was an escapee from Owerri Prisons."

Sadly, men of the Civil Defence who should provide security in and around our prisons nowadays work as errand boys for political devotees of the minister. If the civil defence officers are not found manning properties and business premises linked to Aregbesola's men in Osogbo or Ile-Ife, they are found running after pick-pockets and scoundrels for stealing goats, fowl and locally-bred dogs in Abakaliki, Zungeru or Mokwa.

Aregbesola, obviously, has failed to provide the needed leadership to the agencies under his care, hence the citizens' continued calls for his removal as Minister of Interior so the country will not go further into abyss on the account of his cluelessness.

Aregbesola has a job.

To announce public holidays and to greet politicians during their birthdays as if it was buhari.

How can he fail in such a thing?

But truth is he failed, he refused to greet obasanjo on his birthday 2018

I'm not lying here it is

Aregbesola's job

https://www.premiumtimesng.com/news/headlines/260826-buhari-fails-greet-obasanjo-81st-birthday.html

Oyetola sponsored job

I've met persons who travelled down to dis country jus to get their passports renewal.. Passport booklets are now more scarce than FG jobs. I paid over 100k to get my brother a 10yrs passport in their express service centre in maitama becos it was sort of urgent. Guess what?? They made a mistake on the passport and it was rejected for d application. I had to spend anoda 50k to redo a 5yr passport.

Which minister hasn't failed? Abeg make una rest

Honestly, yes.

Same like majority of his colleagues in the cabinet.

He is the one behind muric

Lalasticlala

If Aregbe failed, how do you rate

Ngige
Onyeama
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Emefiele