Minister of Interior, Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, has announced that the Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS) can now process and deliver 4,000 to 5,000 passports within five hours — a feat achieved for the first time in 62 years.
He made this known in a statement on Thursday after inspecting the newly established Centralised Passport Personalisation Centre at the NIS headquarters in Abuja.
According to him, the facility now enables the Service to personalise over 1,000 passports in just one hour, a significant leap from the previous output of 250 to 300 passports per day.
“This morning (Thursday), alongside the Permanent Secretary, Dr Magdalene Ajani, and the Comptroller General of the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS), Kemi Nanna Nandap, I inspected the newly built Centralised Passport Personalisation Centre at the NIS headquarters in Abuja.
“With these strategic infrastructural investments, which did not cost a kobo to the government, the NIS can now personalise over 1,000 passports in one hour.
“To put it into perspective, long before this development, the service could only record an average of 250 to 300 passports daily. But today, under five work hours, the service can now deliver about 4,500 to 5,000 passports.
“As a major milestone, for the first time in 62 years of the service [NIS], this centralisation puts an end to the production of our passports at multiple centres across the world,” he stated.