Nigeria Unveils contactless app to boost passports processing and ease collection

…Passports to be issued from Abuja from April 2025

Nigeria has unveiled a contactless passport processing App in Abuja to ease the hassle of physically appearing to be processed at a passport processing centre.

Sequence to this development, Nigerians will soon begin to process and receive Nigerian passports from the comfort of their homes.

However, only Nigerians who are 18 years and above, and those who are applying for re-issue of their expired passports will be able to process and obtain the contactless passports while fresh applicants will need to appear and register their biometrics at a passport processing centre for their passports.

The Minister of Interior, Dr. Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, announced the new strategy at a stakeholders’ forum where the contactless passport processing App was unfolded.

The new app project aims to eliminate human contact as much as possible.

The project, is being jointly handled by two Nigerian firms-Irish Smart Technology and New World, which have been test-running the process for the past nine months.

According to the Minister, the new technology was adopted to reduce the burden usually encountered by Nigerians at home and abroad in their quest to obtain a Nigerian passport and save them from being exploited by middlemen, who create artificial hurdles to fleece them.

Tunji-Ojo disclosed that the App had been designed to take care of every requirement for the issuance of Nigerian passport and make it seamless for applicants to obtain the travelling document with record time.

The minister announced that with effect from April next year, passport production will be centralized in Nigeria as no immigration attaché in any foreign mission would be allowed to approve visa issuance.

Early, the Comptroller-General of the Nigerian Immigration Service, Mrs Kemi Nandep, said the contactless app introduction became pertinent to reduce the inconvenience associated with physical processing and to strengthen the security of the Nigerian passport in line with international best practices.