The Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) has been given two weeks by Interior Minister Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo to process the more than 200,000 pending passport applications.
The minister issued the directive on Thursday in Abuja while speaking with Caroline Adepoju, the acting comptroller-general of NIS.
The meeting was also attended by Yinka Fisher, the managing director of Iris Smart Technologies, the organisation in charge of creating the booklets for Nigerian passports.
The minister claimed that by issuing the order, he kept his promise to eliminate any obstacles to obtaining passports and other immigration documents.
“In my opinion, the passport issue is a national emergency; I continue to receive daily emails from Nigerians who are upset about it. We cannot carry on in this manner.
“President Bola Tinubu is embarrassed by it now. Here, I speak for him as your minister.
“Now that embarrassment belongs to me. I’m not modifying what I said. The minister stated, “I need the backlog to be finished in two weeks.
According to Mr. Tunji-Ojo, he receives daily updates on passport enrollments.
“We’ll make sure that our debts are paid off by November as well. My stance continues to be that the passport application process must not be further delayed, he emphasised.
In their remarks, Ms. Adepoju and Mr. Fisher gave the minister their word that they would use all available means to reduce the backlog of passport requests.
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Ms. Adepoju revealed that even though there were 200,000 enrolments nationwide as of Thursday morning, the NIS had acquired enough textbooks to finish the backlog.
The minister has also met strategically with Ahmed Audi, controller-general of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC), Haliru Nababa, and Abdulganiyu Jaji, controller-general of the Federal Fire Service (FFS), and Nigeria Correctional Service (NCOs).
He instructed them to create a workable, executable roadmap with timelines, approaches, deliverables, and methodology within four weeks.
