Immigration Boss Warns Nigerians: You Won’t Qualify For International Passport Unless You’ve National Identity Card

The Comptroller General of the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS), Mohammed Babadede has warned Nigerians to obtain their electronic National Identity Cards before January next year as they would be one of the conditions for obtaining International Passport.
The Immigration boss, who spoke to news men after a meeting of the National Identity Management Harmonization committee at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, said that every citizen must possess the National Identity Number as a condition to apply for the Nigerian passport.
“We have agreed that from 1st January 2018, anybody who is going to apply for the Nigerian Passport, whether renewal or fresh, must first have a national identity number. Why we are doing this is we want to ease business for Nigerians.
“There is no need for you to go and have your bio metric captured by NIMC and then you come and capture again with the Nigeria Immigration. Once you give us your NIN number we will collect the bio metric from NIMC and produce your passport. That is the intention to do in all other agencies.”
Mohammed Babadede said that foreigners residing in Nigeria were not exempted, as they will also require number when renewing their residence permit.
“I have also given directive that any foreigner, non-Nigerian resident in Nigeria will not get his permit renewed. He or she will not get his renewal until he has a NIN. To achieve this, NIMC NIN and passport numbers will be harmonized and we are committed to allow NIMC in Immigration. All NIMC staff can work in our passport offices.
“So when you come to get the passport you can also get the National identity card. The NIM-C has also allowed immigration staff to work in their offices so anybody who is coming to claim Nigerian citizenship; they will help to identify that citizen. That is the cooperation that we have had so far.”
The Federal Government had, in 2014, ordered all Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) and security organizations involved in all forms of biometric data capture of Nigerians to complete their registrations and handover to the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC).
The committee’s today, Tuesday, is in continuation of the efforts to achieve the harmonization process.
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