Port Health Services (PHS) officials extort money from travellers to issue them yellow cards, according to victims, among them a highly placed public servant who cried out after his wife was given rough treatment at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja.
A yellow card is the health clearance document needed to enter some foreign countries.
The public servant, who did not want to be named, said his wife and their seven children who were on their way to an overseas country were made to spend long hours at the airport to collect their yellow cards.
Eye witness accounts TheNiche obtained from telephone calls and text messages showed that the event attracted the anger of many who had gone through a similar experience.
Demand for bribe
The public servant alleged that PHS officials demanded and collected N10,000 from his family as “settlement” for not arriving the airport in time to collect their yellow cards.
The official cost of a yellow card is N1,000.
Requests by other travellers who also arrived late to get their yellow cards fell on deaf ears as the officials allegedly collected unreceipted cash as penalty.
When TheNiche visited the office of the Head of PHS in Lagos, Alex Oko, she was said to have gone to the Murtala Mohammed International Airport for a meeting.
But a junior employee who pleaded anonymity because he was not authorised to speak officially, said he could not deny the allegation because of the attitude of many travellers towards collecting yellow cards.
He explained that some officials may extort money because of the carefree attitude of those who want the yellow card.
Official process explained
According to him, instead of going through the normal process of obtaining the certificate, which takes about 10 days, some apply for it on the day of travel and expect to be given a preferential treatment which may lead to demand for bribe.
His words: “We do abstract work here in Lagos. This (office) is a division under the Federal Ministry of Health. It is not the core ministry but a division under the ministry. We give 10 days notice before the collection of yellow cards. This is because applicants need to be vaccinated 10 days to their travelling date.
“People can’t just rush to the airport on the day of trip to obtain a yellow card, they might fall into the hands of fraudsters and other desperate officers. The official payment for yellow card is N1,000.
“The way they operate Abuja office, I may not know, but if you are in a hurry to travel but fail to heed the 10 days’ notice, you can’t blame anybody.”
However, the government official whose wife’s complaint led to the exposure of the alleged extortion and others called on Health Supervising Minister, Khaliru Alhassan, to investigate the sleaze and stop it.
