Nigeria’s minister of interior, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola has revealed that negotiations are ongoing between the government and the Nigeria Postal Service to begin using their speedy mail service to deliver international passports to Nigerians wherever they reside.
He made this known at the opening ceremony of the Nigeria Immigration Service Passport Front Desk Office in Auchi, Edo State, on Saturday, 20th May 2023.
Aregbesola noted that the negotiation with NIPOST is at an advanced stage and became necessary because of massive queues at the passport offices and the stress encountered by Nigerians while trying to obtain their international passports from the various centres.
He said “we are in the final stage of concluding negotiations with NIPOST to begin using its speed mail service to deliver passports to Nigerians wherever they are in the world after production.”
“Our current working schedule is that fresh application would take six weeks after biometric data registration and three weeks for renewal. This is reasonable, competitive and in line the global best practices.”
“The challenge, however, is the waiting period at the point of application and data registration. All applicants will be put in a queue, depending on the centre of their choice, to determine the registration date. Regrettably, it might take two months in some highly competitive centres where the application is very high. We have no control over this.”
He revealed that the Federal Government is working to make the process of obtaining international passports easier for people through the establishment of more passport offices that will help reduce the queues and ultimately the time wasted on waiting for the passports to be produced.
