Voters Verification Holds February 14 - 18

New York-Consulate Issues 36,000 e-Passports

The Nigerian Consulate in the United States has issued about 37, 000 e-passports to nationals since July 2008.

Mr. Ibrahim Auwalu, the Consul General said this at the Nigerian Consulate in New York , ahead of the April 30 deadline for the phasing out of machine-readable standard passport.  

He said that the Consulate had an additional mobile enrolment unit to ensure quick issuance of the e-passports.

Mobile enrolment

“ We have deployed the mobile enrolment unit to central and accessible locations in several states in the US to make sure more Nigerians update their passports,'' he said.

''There are e-passports centres in Washington , Atlanta and New York and many of the countries in the Western hemisphere rely on the post in New York for the e-passports because of the mobile enrolment unit there.'' Auwalu said. 

He said the New York team had extended consular services to Nigerians in Canada , Mexico , Jamaica , Trinidad and Tobago , and  Venezuela , among others.

Data base

The US state department estimates that about 1 million Nigerians reside in the United States .

The consul-general said the Nigeria government was still in the process of establishing a database of Nigerians in the US .

A mandatory 65 -dollars fee is charged for the passport and additional fees for processing.

Designated centres

The Nigeria posts in London , New York , Johannesburg , New Delhi and Madrid were designated in 2008 as the pilot foreign centres for the e-passports.

The Nigerian Immigration Service has since then designated more centres abroad for the e-passport and moved its personnel around countries on intervention assignments to capture more Nigerians.  

In another development, the immigration service says the introduction of e-Passport has saved numerous Nigerians from being repatriated from other countries.

Its Public Relations Officer, Mr. Joachim Olumba, said it had also prevented a huge financial loss.

E-passport saved repatriation

It said that the service decided to deploy more officers to the issuance of the passport due to requests from many Heads of Missions to expedite action on the installation of e-passport issuing equipment in their countries.

“Even in countries where e-passport issuing equipment had been installed, the computer-generated interview dates had programmed applicants for several months after the cut-over date,”  it said. 

According to the statement, the fear and panic among Nigerians in Diaspora over the previously approved deadline for the cut-over date from the Machine Readable Passport to e-passport also necessitated the increase in the number of officers issuing the passport.

The statement noted that Nigerians in Diaspora who had benefitted from the exercise were grateful to the Nigerian government.

The statement further stated that the passport intervention exercise had enhanced the manpower development of the service as well as improved its performance and reputation.

It stressed the determination of the management to ensure that no Nigerian in Diaspora suffered loss of his/her lawful immigration status as a consequence of the cut-over from Machine Readable Passport (MRP) to the e-Passport.

The gesture, the statement said, was in fulfillment of the Nigerian government's policy of citizen–centred diplomacy.

NAN/Margaret/Yinka