Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, the minister of interior, announced that the Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS) will commence home delivery of passports starting June.
Tunji-Ojo disclosed this on May 24 during his inspection of the electronic gates at the new terminal of the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport in Abuja.
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However, the minister clarified that the home delivery service would initially be limited, to avoid overwhelming the system.
The service will be available in four major cities: Lagos, Port Harcourt, Kano, and Abuja.
For Nigerians living abroad, the home delivery service will be piloted in the United States and the United Kingdom to ensure its effectiveness before a broader rollout.
Tunji-Ojo highlighted that the lack of a dedicated data centre had previously delayed the implementation of the home delivery system.
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He revealed that the NIS had been relying on a private company’s data centre, which was not a sustainable solution for the long term.
“We have completed the whole solution but when we came on board, we realised that the data centre was not really there,” Tunji-Ojo stated.
“We were leveraging on 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.”
The minister emphasized the importance of building a robust infrastructure to maintain data integrity and ensure national security.
“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,” he explained.
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Tunji-Ojo expressed his dissatisfaction with the current state of affairs, noting, “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 assured the public that the newly constructed data centre and the passport delivery solution are now operational.
“It is about national security and I can assure you that it is comparable with anyone you can find anywhere in the world,” he said.
“We have built the data centre, sorted the passport delivery solution and done the final presentation in terms of technology deliverables and the tracking solution which will all be embedded in the application we have so we do not create multiple lines of failure.”
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