Nigeria’s Minister of Interior, Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo has assured Nigerians living abroad that they don’t have to travel home to obtain their international passport.
The Minister said a situation where diaspora Nigerians travel form one country or the other to obtain passports due to scarcity has become a thing of the past.
He spoke in Abuja on Friday, saying the government has decided to make the process seamless by October.
Tunji-Ojo who spoke to journalists in the nation’s capital, also stated that all passport backlogs have already been cleared, adding that “we now have about 80,000 passports” in reserve.
The reserve, he said, include the 32 and 70 pages, stressing that the federal government has now made passport services seamless for Nigerians who want to obtain locally and those living outside the country.
He explained that the federal government has decided to activate the Automated Application system, by October this year, which will enable Nigerians wherever they live to apply and obtain their passports.
According to him, “Henceforth Nigerians in the diaspora would not need to travel from one country to another to obtained Passports, saying the era of wasting working hours, resources and risking their lives on long journey is gone.
“We are going to do a pre-launch of this 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.
“But now that we have this systems in place, Nigerians would not have to embark on different journeys across the world for Passport acquisition.”
The minister however justified the recent increase in the passport fee, saying it was necessary because of the exchange rate of the Naira to the Dollar.
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Share your story or advertise with us: WhatsApp: +2348174884527, Email: [email protected]
