Immigration Unveils Two-Week Timeline for Passport Processing

Wura-Ola Adepoju, the Comptroller General of the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS), has announced a two-week processing timeline for green passports between the point of application.

Appearing on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily programme on Wednesday, Adepoju, joined by NIS Deputy Comptroller General, Kemi Nandap, stressed the necessity of thorough screening, emphasising the period from application to production.

Expressing concern over the backlog of uncollected passports at the Ikoyi office, Adepoju urged applicants to anticipate a two-week wait for the completion of the passport issuance process.

“Because of the screening that we need to do, we are looking at two weeks as the timeframe from the point of application to the point of production,” she said.

The Immigration boss further disclosed that starting March 8, 2024, Nigerians can renew their travel passports seamlessly without any need for human contact, streamlining the renewal process for enhanced convenience.

“From March 8, everyone applying for renewal will be doing contactless application because for people who have Nigerian passports, we have their data, we have their biometrics.

“So, from the comfort of their homes, they can apply for renewal or re-issue of their passports and they would be able to deploy their biometrics like their fingerprints which we will now compare with what we have in our database. If everything goes well, then we will be able to issue them the passports they applied for”, she added.

Nandap, on her part, revealed that the Service has received over 46,000 applications since January 8, 2024, marking the initiation of the automated passport application process.

“We are making it as seamless as possible. From inception, that’s January 8 which was when we went live, we’ve received over 46,000 applications (both fresh and renewal),” she said while appealing to Nigerians to input the right information on the Service’s website.

Additionally, Adepoju highlighted the portal’s capability for data modification in passport applications. Responding to concerns about potential job losses among immigration officials, she said,  “No, the objective of the automation is to make things seamless, the comfort of our application and national security.”

“From March 8, all the people applying for renewal will be able to do contactless biometric capturing.”

On efforts put in place to ensure non-Nigerians do not get the green passport, Nandap said, “We are meeting with critical stakeholders such NPC and ALGON because an average Nigerian will have to go to their local government to get their certificate of indigeneship.

“We are working tirelessly with these stakeholders to make sure that they also have a proper way of documenting these certificates because they give us these certificates that we use.

“Even if we say it’s seamless and contactless, we still have officers on the ground to do secondary checks to ensure that the person sitting in front of you to be captured for biometrics is actually a Nigerian. we have different levels of checks and ways to make sure that nobody who is a non-Nigerian gets our passport.”