Let me thank the Office of the Speaker, House of Representatives Nigeria, Femi Gbajabiamila, and the Minister of Interior, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, for the speed they have started to fix this passport renewal paralysis across Nigerian foreign missions and homeland. The minister has promised to fix this and I want to thank him. Mr. Minister, after my piece, called an emergency meeting with Immigration officers across the nation, and has put out a statement.
“To permanently curb the complaints of difficulty in obtaining Passports from the NIS, today, I held a meeting with the Leadership of the Nigeria Immigration Service and all Passport Control Officers in Nigeria and Immigration Attachés around the world…We are turning round the entire application process in a way that is seamless, transparent and will accord human dignity to applicants and fulfill citizenship integrity.”
To the young people, help is coming.
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Good People, we need help for one of our fellow citizens. He completed his PhD in Europe but his school has refused to release his certificate until he comes with a valid Nigerian passport: “I really need the passport. I completed my PhD in May 2020 (about a year ago) and my certificate has been ready for pickup. But the school requires me to present a valid passport to be able to collect it.”
According to him, he has been trying to renew his Nigerian passport but was told that “there is no booklet” to print one. He had done the biometric capture, etc [I have a copy of the confirmation slip]. This “no booklet” thing is not new; very unfortunate it has not been solved.
The embassy in charge of this is the Embassy of Nigeria in Madrid (Spain). This young man has a job in one of the leading technology firms in Europe where he develops AI for autonomous systems. Without this new passport, even that job is in trouble!
If you can help or know someone who can help, inmail me or email …
Whoever is responsible for the booklets to print Nigerian passports should do his or her job. It turns out that this problem – inability to renew passports – is systemic and widespread across our foreign missions. I just checked my inmails and many others have the same problems: massive delays on renewing passports.
I have followed up and was told that a contract with a supplier is the cause of the problem. I have also received a phone number to call the minister of interior. I will not call – we need to fix this for ALL CITIZENS, not for the few who have access to me.
Last month, I had to call the Nigerian Embassy in Washington DC via my contacts to avoid a couple in the US being messed up due to delays in renewing passports. Please everyone involved should FIX this. Calling for another special treatment is not what I want to do now. Let everyone get help.
Sign whatever contract and make the booklets available to the embassies. Mr. Minister, do your job!
Nigerian Passport Challenge: Minister of Interior Announces New Rules to Eliminate Bottlenecks
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I think we are being fed rubbish as usual. If there is no way those who manage this cannot confirm the inventory of unused booklets at any station of theirs worldwide in 20 minutes and let citizens hold those who are in charge at the stations responsible immediately, we are just blowing air around. All these rejigging nonsense does not help anyone at all. We are talking about security documents, how come we cannot say this station has this number or that?