Int’l Passport: ‘We have over 80,000 booklets in reserve’, Internal Minister
…October date for those in the Diaspora seamlessly
Minister of Interior, Hon. Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, has said Nigerians should no longer entertain any fear of delay in the collection of passports as there are over 80,000 passport booklets waiting to be issued.
The Minister, who disclosed this to journalists in Abuja on Friday, also assured that from October, with the activation of the Automated Application system, Nigerians in the Diaspora would enjoy seamless acquisition of passports, adding that recently the passport booklets in reserve have not gone below 50,000.
Hon. Tunji-Ojo added that all backlogs of passports have been cleared, saying that the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) no longer owes its service providers regarding printing and supply of passports.
His words: “Henceforth Nigerians in the Diaspora, especially those in the United States, Canada and United Kingdom, would not need to travel from one country to another to obtain Passports, saying the era of wasting working hours, resources and risking their lives on long journeys is gone.
“We now have about 80,000 passports in stock, both 32 pages and 70 pages. We are going to do a pre-launch of these automated systems very soon. And by October they will be fully operational. We have a situation in London where we have 16,000 Nigerians applying for Passports, and the capacity of our systems in the Embassy is about 200”, he said.
Tunji-Ojo while justifying the increase in passport fees, said it is a matter of cost benefits analysis especially, “When you look at the rate of dollar compared to naira. The increase didn’t affect the cost of passports outside Nigeria, it was only about 45 percent.
“But now that we have this system in place, Nigerians would not have to embark on different journeys across the world for Passport acquisition,” he assured.
He noted that the government is not exploiting Nigerians, but only increased it to cover the cost of procurement of passports.
“If at all the government should subsidize anything, I don’t think it should be passports. The increase is just from N35,000 to N50,000 naira. No increase outside Nigeria”, he further assured.
