The Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) has assured Nigerians that delay of international passport renewal or issuance of new passports will no longer be an issue by March 2022. This was disclosed by the Acting Comptroller-General, NIS, Isa Idris during a virtual media interaction on Saturday. According to him, the launch of the enhanced e-passport with improved features would help to address this issue.
Idris said, “Just Friday, we received a total of 45,000 booklets towards clearing the backlog and in December alone, we received more than 100,000 booklets which we have continued to distribute across the passport centers nationwide. This is not just for Nigerians in Nigeria alone but for those in the Diaspora as well.
“But with the introduction of the enhanced e-passport, we are good to go in our efforts towards addressing the scarcity. This enhanced e-passport is a great improvement on the biometric passport technology which we adopted as a country in 2007.
“It is a step towards curbing forgery, impersonation, and other forms of fraud associated with obtaining travel documents under the old machine-readable passport regime.”
Idris urged Nigerians to apply for passport renewal or issuance online to avoid personal contacts with NIS officials, in order to curb corrupt practices within the Service.
He also cautioned members of the public to avoid last-minute applications unless in emergency situations.
According to him, “The Service is working hard to ensure full compliance with the three-week duration for renewal and six-week waiting period for fresh applications.
“The waiting period is for us to validate the addresses provided by the applicants. So, Nigerians should not forget that they have six months to renew their passports. They should not wait till it expires, and of course, if there are other emergencies, and there is a window for them.”
Idris also stated that one of the core responsibilities of the NIS is to monitor and protect the nation’s borders and the Service should not be viewed as just a passport production agency.
