The Minister of Interior, Dr. Olunbuni Tunji-Ojo, announced a major advancement in Nigeria’s passport reform initiative, following an inspection of the newly completed Centralised Passport Personalisation Centre in Abuja.
Accompanied by the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry, Dr. Magdalene Ajani, and the Comptroller General of the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS), Kemi Nanna Nandap, the Minister hailed the facility as a significant achievement for the current administration and for all Nigerians.
The new center, the first of its kind in the NIS’s 62-year history, aligns Nigeria with global best practices in passport production, similar to countries like the United Kingdom and the United States. According to the Minister, this move ensures greater integrity, quality, and efficiency in the nation’s travel documents.
Dr. Tunji-Ojo stated that the state-of-the-art facility will transform passport production, drastically increasing daily output from 250–300 booklets per machine to over 4,500–5,000 passports.
This new capacity means that approved passports will be ready for collection within 24 hours, effectively ending the era of backlogs and manual personalization.
“The era of backlogs and manual personalization is over. Nigerians can now expect faster, more reliable service as we strengthen the integrity of our travel documents,” the Minister said.
The Minister highlighted several key milestones of the reform program, which include migrating to a single, uniform passport series, achieving full integration into the ICAO Public Key Directory (PKD) to ensure global authentication of Nigerian passports, and successfully deploying the new system across all passport-issuing locations, including Nigerian missions abroad.
Dr. Tunji-Ojo credited President Bola Ahmed Tinubu for his support, as well as the dedication of top officials from the Ministry of Interior and the NIS.
He also commended IRIS Smart Technologies Ltd., the government’s technical partner, for making the project possible without drawing directly from public funds.
The project, he noted, underscores the government’s commitment to building enduring institutions rather than systems reliant on individuals.
