…says passports stocks hit 80,000
Nigerians in diaspora would henceforth enjoy seamless acquisition of passports, especially those in United States, Canada and United Kingdom.
This comes into effect as the Federal Government activates Automated Application system by October.
The government also said that all backlogs of Passports have been cleared, noting that the Nigeria Immigration Service, (NIS) no longer owe its service providers regarding printing and supply of passports.
“We now have about 80,000 Passports in our stocks, both the 32 pages and the 70 pages ” the government said.
The Minister of Interior, Dr Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo stated this at a media briefing in Abuja to mark his one year in office.
Tunji-Ojo said 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,” Tunji-Ojo said.
Tunji-Ojo also justified the increase in Passports fees, saying it is a matter of cost benefits analysis especially “when you look at the rate of dollar compared to naira”.
He also said the increase didn’t affect the cost of Passports outside Nigeria, saying the increase was only about 45 percent.
He said government is not exploiting Nigerians but to cover the cost of procurement of Passports.
“If at all government should subsidize anything, I don’t think it should be Passports. The increase is just from 35, 000 naira to 50,000 naira. No increase outside Nigeria”, Tunji-Ojo said.
He urged journalists to focus magnifying the policy thrust of the present administration, rather than looking at the negatives as President Bola Tinubu inherited most of the challenges facing the country.
