The Federal Government, yesterday, disclosed that it produced 1.8 million passport booklets in 2022, to meet the rising demands of Nigerians.
It also promised to ameliorate the challenges encountered by Nigerians in applying for and obtaining the Nigerian Passport, through improved service delivery and streamlining of its operations.
Speaking at the commissioning of the Ilesa Passport Front Office and Production Centre of the Nigeria Immigration Service in Ilesa, Osun State, Minister of Interior, Rauf Aregbesola, said the government is also working assiduously to adequately address the growing number of Nigerians who need the passport for other purposes.
Aregbesola said: "In recent years, there has been an upsurge in passport demands by Nigerians. The first factor in this upsurge was the COVID-19 pandemic which affected our production schedule, due to restrictions on human movement. This created a backlog that we were trying to clear when an unprecedented number of Nigerians now decided to travel outside the country and applied for a passport, thereby compounding the backlog challenge.
"Then, of course, the panic buying syndrome kicked in. Many people, who had no immediate need for a passport, then started applying, creating a deluge of applications. Thankfully, that is behind us now. The backlogs have all been cleared and we are producing on schedule in all our centres.
"Fresh application will take six weeks after biometric data capture, while renewal requires just three weeks. To respond to the challenge, we increased our production capacity. In 2021, we produced one million booklets. Last year, we increased production to 1.8 million, nearly doubling our efforts. We shall keep working at it to ensure that we provide for as many Nigerians as they are desirous of the passport.
"The Passport Front Office we are commissioning today (yesterday) is one of the ways we are responding to increased demand for passports, especially to reduce the waiting time for biometric data capture. We have opened this front office in Alimosho, Katsina, Zaria, Daura and in several Nigerian missions abroad in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, where the enhanced passport is being rolled out."
