1 month ago
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To redeem its pledge to modernise Nigeria’s passport ecosystem, present businesslike services to citizens and elevate the planetary estimation of the country’s question documents, the national authorities has unveiled a Centralised Passport Personalisation Centre astatine the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) office successful Abuja.
The initiative, driven by the Ministry of Interior, is aimed astatine streamlining passport production, reducing delays and improving the wide ratio of the issuance process. With the caller system, Nigerians tin person their passports wrong 1 week of application.
The curate of Interior, Dr. Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, who inspected the installation yesterday, 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 US, UK, France and India.
He said, “This centre allows passports to beryllium printed wrong 24 hours and delivered wrong 7 days. No Nigerian should 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,“ helium stated.
The curate besides announced the unification of Nigeria’s 2 passport bid into a azygous authorities and the country’s afloat migration to the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) Public Key Directory, which helium 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,” the curate said.
He noted that the caller centralised exemplary volition importantly chopped down processing time, heighten transparency and align Nigeria’s passport operations with planetary champion practices observed successful countries similar the United States, United Kingdom, France, and India.
“What we’ve done is to institutionalise excellence. This is not a favour; it is the close of each Nigerian to beryllium served efficiently,” Tunji-Ojo said.
The curate credited the project‘s occurrence to President Bola Tinubu’s committedness to nationalist assemblage reform.
He said 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 instance, it‘s a large triumph for this medication and 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 stated.
The curate highlighted cardinal milestones of the betterment programme, including the migration to a single, azygous passport bid and eliminating discrepancies betwixt older versions.
Nigeria’s afloat integration into the ICAO Public Key Directory (PKD) volition guarantee planetary authentication of Nigerian passports and the palmy deployment of the caller strategy crossed each passport issuing locations, including Nigerian missions abroad.
The curate 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 curate stated.
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