>
The Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) Ikoyi Passport Office, in Lagos, has attributed the delay in processing international passports to challenges of epileptic power supply and non- validation of names supplied by applicants in their National Identity Number (NIN).
New Passport Control Officer (PCO), Ikoyi Passport Office, Mrs Abolupe Bewaji, a Deputy Comptroller of Immigration (DCI), disclosed this to journalists in Lagos.
The PCO said the NIS is scaling up efforts to address the challenges in order to improve delivery timelines for the renewal and issuance of passports in line with the ministerial directive.
She said hitches associated with epileptic power supply has been addressed as a financial institution donated a 100KVA generating set within the first six days of her assumption of office to fast track issuance of passports.
“Applicants will be attended to on a first-come-first-serve basis. The ministerial order on passport issuance administration reforms will be strictly adhered to. Passport renewal will take three weeks while fresh application will take six weeks.
“I must admit that the problem of power supply has been delaying passport processing at the Ikoyi Passport Office before my assumption of office, but all thanks to God and Access Bank Plc.
“We have been able to overcome this challenge in my first six days in office as a 100 KVA generating set was donated to us. We need to educate the public in certain areas on the price of passports as this will help us reduce the influence of touts in passport offices.
“Second is the issue of National Identity Number. Applicants who wish to get their passport should make sure the details on their passports are the same with what is on the National Identity Number before they start the application,” Bewaji said.
On crowd control at the Ikoyi Passport Office, Bewaji said the NIS is collaborating with the World Health Organisation (WHO) to evolve the best protocols to curtail the spread of COVID -19.
A source at the Ikoyi office, however, told The Nation that hitches in network from the portal of the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) also contributes significantly to the delay in processing passports.
The source said that there is usually downtime for days in connecting to the portal of NIMC to validate applicants’ information to speed up passport processing.