NIS inaugurates enhanced e-passport office in Zaria

The Comptroller-General, Nigeria Immigration Service, Mr Isah Jere, has inaugurated the enhanced e-passport office in Zaria, Kaduna State, towards reducing delays in processing and issuance of passports to prospective applicants.

The comptroller-general said with the inauguration of the facility, Zaria has now joined other centers in the country and abroad to have enhanced e-passport service delivery.

Jere added that he also approved the passport production machine to be hosted in Zaria.

He said the enhanced e-passport being rollout comes in three categories; the 32-page five-year validity; 64-page five-year validity and 64-page 10-year validity for adults only.

He added that enhanced e-passport has more sophisticated security features over the ordinary e-passport, making it one of the most secured passports in the world.

He added that the enhanced e-passport and ordinary e-passport would run concurrently until a convenient time when all NIS centres would have been fully migrated.

“As we rollout the enhance e-passport document today, we are confident that all cases of delays in processing passport would be taken care of,’’ he said.

Jere, therefore, advised applicants to abide strictly by the application guidelines and ensure that they make use of the online application and payment platform, which is: passport.immigration.gov.ng.

He said it is equally important for passport applicants to ensure that they confirm that their NIN details were the same as the passport application details to avoid mismatch.

In his remarks, the Emir of Zazzau, Malam Ahmed Bamalli, said the establishment of passport office in Zaria would stop residents of Zaria and environs from travelling to Kaduna or Kano to get the passport.

The royal father, therefore, commended the service for the project and prayed for the organisation to prosper.

He also commended Gov. Nasir el-Rufai for allocating land for the project few days before the commencement of the project; “Your Excellency, this is unprecedented’’.

He said: “This is one of the legacies of our administration for me as an Emir; for you as a governor of Kaduna state and for the C-G as Comptroller General of Immigration.’’

Earlier, Gov. Nasir el-Rufai expressed great pleasure over the project; noting that it is the first of its kind outside the state capital throughout Nigeria.

He said Kaduna state was blessed to be the only state with two cities (Zaria and Kaduna) which were that are among 10 most populous cities in Nigeria.

“This is part of the reasons why we made the case that Zaria needs its own passport office in addition to the one in Kaduna.

“I am very grateful to the minister for seeing the logic and encouraging the establishment of this office first as front office but with our brother being the C-G.

“We are grateful to President Muhammadu Buhari for giving one of our sons the opportunity to head the NIS, a son of Kaduna state was also the head of FRSC,’’ he said.

He, therefore, commended the president for this recognition.