Minister of Interior, Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, has announced a series of modernization reforms for Nigeria’s immigration services, highlighting N600 million naira significant cost savings for the government through an automated application system.
According to The PUNCH, while appearing on Episode 2 of ‘Unfiltered: The Big Interview,’ a YouTube series hosted by O’tega ‘The Tiger’ Ogra, the minister detailed initiatives to streamline passport applications, introduce home delivery for passports, and implement advanced passenger information systems at airports.
“When we came on board in August last year, it was about stock-taking because I always say this, as a professional, you spend more time planning so that execution can be pretty easy and we’ve been able to do that across all our agencies and today, the short-term goals that we had for ourselves we’ve been able to achieve that,” Tunji-Ojo said.
He elaborated on the short-term achievements in Immigration, including clearing a backlog of over 204,000 passports within slightly over two weeks.
“Under President Bola Tinubu, we made sure that passport backlog has become something of the past that will never happen again,” he added.
The minister discussed the ongoing automation process, which has saved the government billions of naira by digitizing the application and archiving process.
“For archiving alone which is about N200 that we used to pay per applicant and by about three million passports a year, that’s about N600 million. So, we have saved government of that money and yet it’s even more convenient for people because people can now do that on their own and we moved now to the stage of even uploading passport and all these other things,” he explained.
Tunji-Ojo also mentioned the upcoming launch of a home delivery system for passports and the implementation of the Advanced Passenger Information and Passenger Name Record system.
This system allows immigration officials to pre-profile travelers before they arrive in Nigeria, enhancing national security.
“When you come into Nigeria, our scrutiny is now objective,” he noted.
The minister highlighted the establishment of a state-of-the-art command and control center for air border control management, which has been praised by the International Air Transport Association.
“Just two weeks ago IATA came all the way from their headquarters in Canada and they took a facility tour…the IATA representative said it clearly that this is one of the best command and control centres anywhere in the world,” he said.
Tunji-Ojo also announced plans to streamline the visa application process, ensuring that applicants can receive an e-visa to Nigeria within 48 hours, stating, “We have just completed our visa counter, and we centralise the process of procuring visas to ensure more security to enhance our national security. Nobody gets a visa to Nigeria now, you know, without going through Interpol 24/7 and other international criminal database systems, so we want to profile you.”
By automating the visa process, the ministry aims to reduce the waiting time and remove the need for lobbying to enter Nigeria.
“We’re opening the space you know to legitimate and legal law-abiding people to come to Nigeria, explore the beauty of Nigeria, see our tourism, see the good feeling and see how wonderful a host we as people are,” Tunji-Ojo stated.
These reforms are part of the government’s broader efforts to enhance national security and improve the ease of doing business in Nigeria.
