10 May 2008
Lagos — Comptroller-General, Nige-ria Immigration Service (NIS), Mr. Chuk-wurah Udeh, has said the service had issued 300,000 e-passport since August 2007.
The announcement was contained in a statement signed by Mr Ekpedeme King, Public Relations Officer of NIS. Udeh spoke when an European Union (EU) delegation on migration paid him a courtesy visit.
He said the Federal Govern-ment had also approved the Machine Readable Passport (MRP) and the e-passport to run concurrently until 2010. Udeh said after the deadline, the MRP would cease to be a valid travel document. According to him, the extension is aimed at ensuring a smooth transition to the e-passport regime.
The Comptroller-General said it would also help in avoiding the pitfalls experienced when the MRP was introduced in 1998.
He described the e-passport as one of the Federal Government's strategies to curb irregular migration."The era when a Nigerian traveller would destroy his passport prior to his arrival in Europe in order to hide his identity and seek for asylum is gone. Our immigration counterparts in Europe only need to capture the traveller's fingerprints and send it to the NIS.
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