The Federal Government released a new upgraded electronic passport on Tuesday in order to streamline the passport application process for Nigerians at home and abroad.
The Minister of Interior, Rauf Aregbesola, said during the passport rollout at the Nigerian High Commission in London, United Kingdom, that it is the government’s responsibility to provide the passport without stress and within a reasonable time frame, adding that the Nigerian passport is the highest affirmation of Nigerian citizenship.
Sola Fasure, Minister Media Adviser, said this on Tuesday in a statement headlined “FG Launches Enhanced Passport In The United Kingdom.”
It partly read, “What we have come to do here is symbolic of the core mandate of the Ministry of Interior and indeed, the Federal Government of Nigeria – affirmation of citizenship integrity.
” The Nigerian passport is the highest affirmation of Nigerian citizenship. It is therefore our responsibility to provide the passport without any stress, within a reasonable period.
As we are all aware, there have been huge challenges to passport administration, from shortage of booklet to touting and an economy of corruption built around it.
“These challenges have persisted for too long and a lot of people have become cynical while other have taken them as normal and then roll with it. But I come from a tradition of problem solving in public administration. I do not believe that any problem is insurmountable, so we are going to solve all the problems associated with passport administration and we are already succeeding.”
Aregbesola was cited as saying that the new enhanced Passport is a tremendous upgrade over the basic Passport that was issued back in 2007, with more sophisticated security features, making it one of the world’s most secure passports.
The statement continued, “The Enhanced e-Passport is a great improvement on the Biometric Passport technology which Nigeria adopted in 2007 as a strategic step towards curbing forgery, impersonation and other forms of frauds associated with obtaining travel document under the old Machine Readable Passport regime.
” We are aware that technology rules the world and we are keeping abreast of the latest development in the field.
“Over the years, the Nigeria Immigration Service had worked assiduously and in close synergy with Messrs Iris Smart Technologies Limited to develop and implement Passport reforms that are in tandem with international best practices, including extant International Civil Aviation Organization’s Standards and Regulations”.
