Nigerians no longer have to wait months to acquire their passports, according to the interior minister, Dr. Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo.
This came as he also revealed a two-week turnaround period for passport applications.
This information was provided on Wednesday in Abuja by Dr Tunji-Ojo, as part of an update on his direction to the Nigeria Immigration Service to process the over 204,000 backlogs of passport applications.
He said, “On September 7, we made a promise to sort out the backlogs in two weeks, but we made it in three weeks, and I sincerely want to apologise to Nigerians for that.
“For us, we are assured that if it can work in the NIS, it can work anywhere else. Nigeria is undergoing a process.
“We inherited 204,332 enrolments without passports being issued, people that had applied and captured. That was the figure, and we gave a marching order because the President was also on our necks to bring solutions and succour to Nigerians.
“We went into strategic meetings with the NIS and with the support of our service providers, we were able to increase printing machines to four in passport offices where we had two. Our service providers gave us the machines at no cost.
“The NIS personnel were doing three shifts, working 24/7 to make sure that we clear the backlogs and to ensure that never again are we going to have backlogs of passport production.
“We want to ensure that nobody waits for more than two weeks to get their passports.
“As of October 1, we had cleared all the 204,332 backlogs, and from the records produced by the NIS, the number of passports already collected is 91,981. Outstanding but available is 112,351.”
