The Hon. Minister of Interior, Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, has called on the management of the Nigeria Immigration Services, to develop key reforms in passport processing, to overcome challenges of delayed issuance and corruption, as expressed by President Bola Tinubu.
Tunji-Ojo gave this advice, while holding a meeting with all paramilitary chiefs under the Ministry of Interior, in Abuja, on Tuesday, August 22, 2023, noting that the President is so concerned, about bringing new reforms to the passport regime.
“Mr President is desirous of bringing in key reforms in our immigration policy in terms of efficiency in passport issuance and for Nigerians to get an international passport, this is something we have to work on.
“Nigerians cannot be made to wait for what is their right, we have to look at the bottlenecks and make sure that we unbundle those bottlenecks and make the service more efficient for the benefit of the people. The whole issue of visas and passports delays and bottlenecks must be looked into and see how we can sanitize the system for Nigerians to feel and know that they are Nigerians indeed,” he said.
He however encouraged the NIS management, to brace up and put hard work into the system, in securing all the Nigerian borders.
“The immigration service will have to do more, work hard, roll up our sleeves and work and we have to secure our borders by ensuring that all our borders land, air and sea borders, are all protected,” he advised.
Tunji-Ojo called for increased usage of technology, to help in monitoring and securing the nation’s borders, as well as in firefighting and other internal security operations.
“We have to look into employing technology to complement and consolidate what you are already doing because I know you are already doing something but we need to move at a faster pace to make sure we secure our territory as a nation,” Mr Tunji-Ojo added.
However, he charged heads of the Federal Fire Service, Nigerian Correctional Service, and the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps, to be proactive at all times to tackle the present and arising challenges in securing Nigeria internally.
“The renewed hope of this government finds it fitting in the federal ministry of Interior and its agencies and I assure you, God willing, that we will not disappoint the president please do not disappoint men because I need to build on your performance to be able to deliver the renewed hope to Nigerians.
“For the fire service, we need to look into the response time to intervene in protecting lives and property of the public so we need to optimize our processes, be creative and bring technology into what we do,” he stated.
