Federal Government Unveils Mega Passport Centre

The Federal Government has unveiled a Centralised Passport Personalisation Centre astatine the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) office successful Abuja.

The Centre was a large determination to redeem its pledge to modernise Nigeria’s passport ecosystem, present businesslike services to citizens, and elevate the planetary estimation of Nigerian question documents.

Driven by the Ministry of Interior, the inaugural was targeted astatine streamlining passport production, reducing delays, and improving the wide ratio of the issuance process.

With the caller system, Nigerians tin present person their passports wrong 1 week of application.

Minister of Interior, Dr. Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, who inspected the facility, described it arsenic a “Game-changer” that volition extremity delays and backlogs successful passport production.

The centre, the archetypal of its benignant since the constitution of the NIS successful 1963, allows passports to beryllium printed wrong 24 hours and delivered wrong 7 days, aligning Nigeria with planetary champion practices successful countries similar the Unutes States, United Kingdom, France and India.

He said, “This centre allows passports to beryllium printed wrong 24 hours and delivered wrong 7 days. No Nigerian should person to hold endlessly for a papers that defines their identity.”

According to Tunji-Ojo, the caller installation is equipped with high-speed machines susceptible of personalising implicit 1,000 passports per hour, a important upgrade from the erstwhile regular mean of 250–300. “This gives the work a imaginable output of 4,500 to 5,000 passports per day” the curate said.

Tunji-Ojo besides announced the unification of Nigeria’s 2 passport bid into a azygous regime, arsenic good arsenic the country’s afloat migration to the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) Public Key Directory, which helium further said ensures planetary authentication of Nigerian passports.

“We person eliminated a backlog of implicit 200,000 passport applications. With this centralisation, we are not conscionable improving speed, we’re ensuring prime and accountability.”

He further explained, “What we’ve done is to institutionalise excellence. This is not a favour; it is the close of each Nigerian to beryllium served efficiently.”

The curate credited the occurrence of the task to President Bola Tinubu’s committedness to nationalist assemblage reform.

He assured that the centralisation volition amended quality, accountability, and efficiency, reducing processing clip from weeks to hours, adding that the reforms people a large milestone successful work transportation and nationalist individuality management.

“We are laying the instauration for a passport strategy Nigerians tin beryllium arrogant of. For us, it’s large triumph for this medication and for Nigerians.

“The epoch of backlogs and manual personalisation is over. Nigerians tin present expect faster, much reliable work arsenic we fortify the integrity of our question documents,” the Minister assured.

Highlighting cardinal milestones of the betterment programme, the curate listed the Migration to a single, azygous passport series, eliminating discrepancies betwixt older versions, Nigeria’s afloat integration into the ICAO Public Key Directory (PKD), ensuring planetary authentication of Nigerian passports arsenic good arsenic the palmy deployment of the caller strategy crossed each passport issuing locations, including Nigerian missions abroad.

The Minister besides commended IRIS Smart Technologies Ltd., the government’s method partner, for enabling the task done a strategical concern that required nary nonstop gully from nationalist coffers.

“This task underscores our resoluteness to physique enduring institutions alternatively than systems babelike connected individuals,” the Minister stated.

He further stated that the authorities had achieved ratio similar ne'er before. “For the archetypal clip since the constitution of the Immigration Service successful 1963, passport accumulation tin present beryllium completed successful grounds time. We tin yet boast of a world-class strategy designed for world-class service.”