By Saidu Idris

365Daily – The Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) has increased its production capacity to beat the May 31 deadline set to clear backlog of passport applications, its Comptroller-General (CG), Muhammad Babandede, has disclosed.

The CG made this known in a press briefing on the NIS passport reforms and recruitment exercise on Thursday May 27, 2021, in Abuja.

He said passport production centres across the country were working round the clock to clear the backlogs before the commencement of the new passport regime on June 1.

Babadende assured of the availability of passport booklets and a total of 23,903 passports awaiting collection by the applicants.

According to him, more than 35,000 passports had been produced in the last few days, with about 22,840 collected; 23,903 not collected and 28 damaged.

He asked all applicants to expect text messages on their registered phone numbers asking them to come for their  passports, adding that more than 100,000 pending applications would be attended to before the deadline of May 31.

“The major challenge we have now is not booklet but production capacity and we have added two production lines to Ikoyi and Ibadan centres,” he said.

He also said that all passport collection centres would be opened from 6:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. daily for applicants and warned that the any officer involved in passports racketeering would be dealt with.

According to him, erring officers were partly responsible for the uncollected passports.

Speaking on the recent recruitment exercise by the NIS, he said it was the best ever in the immigration service as it was transparent, fair and reflected federal character.

He said that the exercise was being carried out in the six geopolitical zones of the country to take 4,000 applicants out of 6,005 applicants invited.