Members of the House of Representatives yesterday rejected the move by the Minister of Interior, Abba Moro, to include their spouses on the list of diplomatic passport holders.
The lawmakers instead called for the pruning of the list of diplomatic passport holders from the current figure of 41. They also called for the reduction of the powers of the president to issue the passports.
These were fallouts of a public hearing of the House Committee on Interior on a bill titled: “An Act to amend the Passport (Miscellaneous Provision) Act Cap. P1 Laws of the Federation of Nigeria 2004.
The bill seeks to clearly define persons eligible for the issuance of diplomatic and official passports.
Chairman, House Committee on Interior, Umar Bature, said various abuses of the diplomatic passports had made a review of the beneficiaries of the policy imperative.
Moro in opposition to the committee’s views said the power of the president to issue or cause diplomatic passports to be issued was in order and should be maintained.
“If the senate president, for example, is travelling with his wife, he carries a diplomatic passport and his wife, a green passport, they will be on two different lines. You are going against the Biblical injunction that what God has joined together, no man should put asunder,” he stated.