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Passport scarcity will become a thing of the past in March -NIS boss, Jere

Ezekiel Johnson
Ezekiel Johnson
Passport: 80 officers on trial for extortion, 8 others dismissed –NIS
Jere

By March this year, the issue of passport scarcity will become a thing of the past, the Acting Comptroller-General, Nigeria Immigration Service, NIS, Idris Isah Jere, has declared.

The NIS boss gave the assurance on Saturday during a virtual interactive section with journalists.

This is as he appealed to Nigerians to support the ongoing reforms at the NIS in order to, among other things, prevent passport racketeering.

Speaking on the efforts to put an end to scarcity of the travel document, Jere said the Service had been given a time lag of March and efforts were ongoing to meet the deadline.

Jere blamed the outbreak of COVID-19 across the globe and the scarcity of foreign exchange for the scarcity of passports.

He said following efforts to contain the spread of COVID-19, which dealt a devastating blow on the countries of the world, restriction of movement was imposed all over the world.

The development, he explained, prevented the issuance of the documents.

Requests for renewal also kept increasing even when nothing could be done about them, he added.

The NIS boss said following the relaxation of restrictions, there had been issuance of the documents and backlogs were already being cleared.

He assured that by March this year, the problem would be a thing of the past.

He said the enhanced e-passport, which he noted had been embedded with improved features, was part of the efforts towards solving the problem of obtaining the document.

Apart from the United Kingdom where it was launched, the NIS boss said, the Service through the support of the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari and the Minister of Interior, Rauf Aregbesola, had inaugurated such centres in Kano, Port Harcourt and Ibadan.

Said he: “Just Friday we received a total of 45,000 booklets towards clearing the backlogs and in December alone, we received more than 100,000 booklets which we have continued to distribute across the passport centres nationwide. This is not just for Nigerians in Nigeria alone but for those in the Diaspora as well.

“But with the introduction of the enhanced e-Passport, we are good to go in our efforts towards addressing the scarcity. This enhanced e-passport is a great improvement on the biometric passport technology which we adopted as a country in 2007. It is a strategic step towards curbing forgery, impersonation and other forms of fraud associated with obtaining travel documents under the old Machine Readable Passport regime.

“And because we know that technology helps to address some of our challenges, including corruption, we have continued to try to stop personal contacts with our officials. My predecessor started to break the jinx and we are continuing on that. We plead with applicants to apply only online and stop physical contacts with our officers to avert corrupt practices.”

While calling for the support of Nigerians in ensuring a successful reform of the NIS, Jere reasoned that there would not be anyone to take bribe if there was no one to offer it.

The comptroller general also emphasised the need for adequate financing of the service, saying that so much fund was needed for its successful operations.

Pointing out that the work of the NIS was more about border management, he said Nigerian borders were massive and required the use of modern technology to be able to effectively monitor them.

He said the job of the NIS was very critical to ensuring the security of the nation.

He praised the President Muhammadu Buhari administration for giving necessary support, stressing that additional funding would enable the service to move forward.

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