The Japa syndrome isn’t going down soon as over 32,000 Nigerians are set to potentially emigrate from the country.
This was made known yesterday as the summary of passport applications for the year 2024 was reported by the Comptroller-General of Immigration Service, Caroline Adepoju, who visited Ikoyi and Alausa passport offices, to confirm firsthand the working offices as regards the introduction of the automated passport application process.
She made note that about 1,438 applications were queried for various reasons. This was while she was speaking with journalists, she then confirmed that 32,462 applications, 11,505 were awaiting approval, while 3,406 who made payment were yet to book appointments at the end of her assessments.
“50 per cent of the total applications have been successfully approved for biometric capture, production and issuance, 35 per cent awaits approval, 11 per cent made payments but yet to book appointments and only four per cent of total applications were queried” she said.
She also said “When queries are successfully answered, the applications return to the queue and are subsequently approved for biometric acquisition, production and issuance “.
While assuring Nigerians credibility of the latest development, she said “As of this morning (yesterday), we have only recorded four per cent rejection of uploaded documents which may be due to errors on the side of the applicant. But our help desk is operational 24/7. The Nigeria Immigration Service, our technical partners, service providers and other stakeholders worked together with the Minister of Interior, Dr Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, to come up with this reform on the automation of passport process which has been in place since the inception of the issuance of enhanced e-passport in 2020.”