The Minister of Interior, Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, has set January 1 as the deadline for private-sector partners of the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) to activate pending passport offices abroad.
While appearing on Channels TV Politics Today on Wednesday, Tunji-Ojo stated that the contractors have until January 1, 2024, to activate foreign passport offices, adding that it’s a part of the backlog of passports in most countries.
His words: “Incidentally, that service – the passport front office – is actually in the contract signed by the NIS with some service providers over a time ago but, up until now, not yet activated. And I have told them, ‘By January 1, God bless you, if you do not activate these services.
“What we’re looking at, for example, in Canada: for a start, we should have about three, four offices. We might not, at this particular point in time, be able to say, ‘We want to spend money to open all these things’ but we can partner with the private sector.
The minister also stated that failure to activate the offices would result in the contractors not being able to carry out their contracts.
“And you will not hold millions of Nigerians in the diaspora to ransom by not being able to provide them the service you ought to provide.”
The post Activate foreign passport offices January 1 – Minister tells contractors appeared first on Vanguard News.