{"id":69388,"date":"2025-07-01T09:11:55","date_gmt":"2025-07-01T09:11:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/?p=69388"},"modified":"2025-07-01T09:11:55","modified_gmt":"2025-07-01T09:11:55","slug":"fg-opens-amnesty-portal-for-visa-overstayers-enforcement-begins-august-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/2025\/07\/01\/fg-opens-amnesty-portal-for-visa-overstayers-enforcement-begins-august-2\/","title":{"rendered":"FG Opens Amnesty Portal for Visa Overstayers, Enforcement Begins August"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Oso Abidemi<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The Federal Government has activated an online immigration amnesty portal to allow foreigners who have overstayed their visas to regularise their status before strict penalties begin on August 1.<\/p>\n<p>Interior Minister, Dr. Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, announced the move during a stakeholders&#8217; meeting in Abuja, urging diplomats to inform their nationals to take advantage of the grace period ending July 31.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOnce the amnesty is over, we will implement the law 100 percent,\u201d he warned, adding that violators risk stiff fines and entry bans-five years for overstays beyond six months, and 10 years for overstays beyond one year.<\/p>\n<p>The portal enables holders of expired visas or residence cards to apply online for a Stay Permit without visiting immigration offices.<\/p>\n<p>This is part of wider reforms including a $15 daily overstay surcharge introduced in May and the full automation of passport and visa services.<\/p>\n<p>The minister said digitisation efforts now save the government nearly \u20a61bn annually and have helped eliminate scarcity and corruption.<\/p>\n<p>Over 14,000 e-visas have been processed in six weeks, with electronic residence and work permits set to launch soon.<\/p>\n<p>Immigration chief Kemi Nandap said the digital reforms will enhance national security and ease travel processing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Oso Abidemi &nbsp; The Federal Government has activated an online immigration amnesty portal to allow foreigners who have overstayed their visas to regularise their status before strict penalties begin on August 1. Interior Minister, Dr. Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, announced the move during a stakeholders&#8217; meeting in Abuja, urging diplomats to inform their nationals to take [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":69389,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[172,1746],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-travel"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69388","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\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69388"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69388\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":69390,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69388\/revisions\/69390"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69389"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}