Abuja produces 1.8m passport booklets, nearly double previous year’s figure
By Jeph Ajobaju, Chief Copy Editor
Up to 1.8 million passport booklets were produced in 2022 to meet growing demand, Abuja has disclosed, saying it is determined to improve service delivery and ameliorate the hassles in obtaining passports.
Interior Minister Rauf Aregbesola announced at the commissioning of the Ilesa Passport Front Office and Production Centre that the federal government is working to live up to the challenge.
“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,” he recounted.
“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.”
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Timeline for obtaining passport
“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,” Aregbesola added, according to Vanguard.
“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 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.”
