Minister of Interior, Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, has disclosed that the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) has issued over 3.5 million passports to Nigerians in the past two years.
The Minister spoke during the commissioning of the Ministry of Interior’s passport front desk, on Tuesday.
He said there had not been any backlog of passports since the inception of the current administration.
“From August 2023, locally, we’ve issued 3,080,141 passports, and in diaspora, we have been able to issue 466,117 passports. So, in less than two years, from August 2023 to date, we have been able to issue over 3.5 million passports to Nigerians.
“This same government, in less than three weeks, cleared a backlog of over 200,000 passport applications. When we came on board, we inherited passport debts in billions of naira. To the glory of God, this administration cleared it (the debts),” he said.
While highlighting all the innovations introduced in passport administration by the current administration, Tunji-Ojo assured that the era of scarcity of the travel document was gone.
He said the new passport office has taken the number of such offices in the country from 13 to 14, thereby making passport solutions more available to the people.
He lamented that upon assumption of office in 2023, he realised that there was no passport office in the ministry, saying it was against standard practice all over the world.
Tunji-Ojo hailed Iris Smart Technologies for providing and installing the facilities at the new passport centre at no cost, disclosing that the technologies used were of the highest grade.
“We got to the Ministry of Interior in 2023, and we were surprised that the Ministry of Interior, which oversights the Nigerian Immigration Service, had no passport office.”
“It’s not done anywhere in the world. And of course, a lot of our public servants have to cancel a day’s work to go and queue. We just thought that it’s part of the privilege of being a public servant, a senior public servant, for you, your family. At least you can just walk in here, do your passport, get your passport and make life easy for you as we are working hard for all Nigerians,” he said.
