Home delivery of passports begins in June – Minister

Beginning from June 2024, the Nigerian Immigration Service will start home delivery of passports in Lagos, Port Harcourt, Kano, and Abuja, the Minister of Interior, Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, has assured.

The minister spoke on Friday when he inspected the electronic gates at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport’s new terminal in Abuja, reports The Nation.

He noted that the delay in implementing home delivery was due to a lack of data centres, adding that for Nigerians in the diaspora, the home delivery service would initially launch in the United States and the United Kingdom, with preliminary testing to ensure its effectiveness.

His words: “We have completed the whole solution but when we came on board, we realised that the data centre was not really there. We were leveraging a private company data centre and we appreciate them for that assistance. We think that it is better to create a permanent solution to problems rather than quick fixes.

“We could have done it in February but we had to build our data centre from scratch to be able to keep the integrity of our data and national security intact. This is more important. It is disgraceful that NIS is 61 years old and NIS is a custodian of biometric data of Nigeria and we believe that NIS should be in charge of the data of Nigeria.

“It is not acceptable that this data is domiciled in a third party and that is why we have been able to do this,” he said.