The Minister of Interior, Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, has stated that the new conditions introduced as prerequisites for obtaining or renewing international passports were instituted to curb the acquisition of Nigerian passports by non-citizens.<\/p>\n
The Minister stated this in Abuja while responding to queries from the press, according to a statement on Wednesday from his media aide, Babatunde Alao.<\/p>\n
Recall that Abuja City Journal earlier reported the outcry by Nigerians about the bottlenecks embedded in processing the newly introduced passport system.<\/p>\n
While emphasizing that the passport is a security document exclusive to Nigerian citizens, the Minister said the new conditions would impede non-Nigerians from acquiring the passport, revealing that foreigners have exploited the inefficiencies of the previous system.<\/p>\n
He acknowledged challenges faced by new passport applicants, assuring the public of an enhanced process in the coming weeks. The new conditions, including the provision of a citizenship certificate, date of birth certificate, and the National Identification Number (NIN), have become critical in verifying an applicant\u2019s true citizenship.<\/p>\n
Tunji-Ojo emphasized that the reform was aimed at simplifying the passport acquisition process for Nigerians by facilitating speedy online application, production, and passport collection.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have to introduce this new system to stop those non-Nigerians carrying Nigerian passports.<\/p>\n
\u201cContrary to reports, the new process is working very effectively and the hiccups recorded are only four percent, which is a significant improvement for a system that is newly introduced and I assure you that in the next one or two weeks we will have a near perfect system.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have to improve our process of obtaining passports because passport is a security document. This new system has improved accessibility, transparency and efficiency,\u201d the minister said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Minister of Interior, Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, has stated that the new conditions introduced as prerequisites for obtaining or renewing international passports were instituted to curb the acquisition of Nigerian passports by non-citizens. The Minister stated this in Abuja while responding to queries from the press, according to a statement on Wednesday from his media aide, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":16454,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[177],"tags":[597],"class_list":["post-16452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-abuja-reports","tag-passport"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16452"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16452\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16471,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16452\/revisions\/16471"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}