Nigeria's Minister of Interior, Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, has announced a significant leap in the Nigerian Immigration Service's (NIS) passport delivery capabilities, marking a historic achievement for the agency. For the first time in 62 years, the NIS can now process between 4,500 and 5,000 passports within a mere five working hours, a dramatic increase from its previous capacity.

This unprecedented improvement is attributed to the newly commissioned Centralised Passport Personalisation Centre at the NIS Headquarters in Abuja. Following an inspection of the state-of-the-art facility, Minister Tunji-Ojo highlighted that the new infrastructure allows the NIS to personalise over 1,000 passports hourly. Previously, the service could only manage an average of 250 to 300 passports daily.

The Minister described the centre as a "game-changer" for the nation's passport production system. He assured Nigerians that, as a direct result of these upgrades, applicants would soon be able to receive their passports within seven days of application, with printing possible within 24 hours of approval. This development is particularly significant as it puts an end to the previous, less efficient model of personalising passports at multiple centres across Nigeria and abroad, which was deemed vulnerable and inefficient across 96 locations.

A major milestone achieved by this centralisation is the eradication of passport production at scattered centres globally, marking a first for the NIS since its establishment in 1963. Minister Tunji-Ojo also revealed that the government inherited a backlog of over 200,000 passport applications. However, he stressed that the new automated system, which significantly reduces human intervention, effectively eliminates such challenges, ensuring that the "era of backlogs is over."

The project, achieved without any direct cost to the government, ensures a seamless, fast, and accountable system for passport processing. The new facility is comparable to world-class centralised passport personalisation centres found in countries like the United States, United Kingdom, France, Russia, India, and Bangladesh, firmly positioning Nigeria's passport service among global leaders.