Tunji-Ojo: Home delivery of passports to start in June

Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, minister of interior, says home delivery of passports will start in June.

Tunji-Ojo spoke on May 24 when he inspected the electronic gates at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport’s new terminal in Abuja.

He said the delivery will not include every location to avoid overloading and damaging the system.

The minister said the Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS) would start home delivery in Lagos, Port Harcourt, Kano, and Abuja.

Tunji-Ojo said for those in the diaspora, the service would begin in the United States and the United Kingdom, with testing to ensure its effectiveness.

According to the minister, the lack of data centres delayed the home delivery of passports.

He said NIS had been using a private company’s data centre but needed to establish a permanent solution to address the issue.

“We have completed the whole solution but when we came on board, we realised that the data centre was not really there,” Tunji-Ojo said.

“We were leveraging on a private company data centre and we appreciate them for that assistance. We think that it is better to create a permanent solution to problems rather than quick fixes.

“We could have done it in February but we had to build our data centre from scratch to be able to keep the integrity of our data and national security intact. This is more important.

“It is disgraceful that NIS is 61 years old and NIS is a custodian of biometric data of Nigeria and we believe that NIS should be in charge of the data of Nigeria.

“It is not acceptable that this data is domiciled in a third party and that is why we have been able to do this.”

Tunji-Ojo said the data centre has been constructed and the passport delivery solution has been resolved.

“It is about national security and I can assure you that It is comparable with anyone you can find anywhere in the world,” he said.

“We have built the data centre, sorted the passport delivery solution and done the final presentation in terms of technology deliverables and the tracking solution which will all be embedded in the application we have so we do not create multiple lines of failure.”

‘E-VISA PROCESSING TIME REDUCED TO 48 HOURS WITH NEW TECHNOLOGY’

Tunji-Ojo said the final presentation of the electronic visa has been completed, adding that it will reduce the visa processing time from 72 hours to 48 hours.

“The passport automation process is almost complete,” he added.

Also speaking, Kemi Nandap, comptroller-general (CG) of NIS, said over 107,000 passports are ready for collection and urged applicants to pick them up.