The Minister of Interior, Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, says the Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS) can now produce between 4,000 and 5,000 passports within five hours a feat achieved for the first time in the Service’s 62-year history.

Tunji-Ojo made this known on Thursday after inspecting the newly built Centralised Passport Personalisation Centre at the NIS headquarters in Abuja. He was accompanied by the Permanent Secretary, Dr. Magdalene Ajani, and the Comptroller General of NIS, Kemi Nanna Nandap.

According to the minister, the new facility allows the Service to personalise over 1,000 passports per hour, a major leap from the previous capacity of 250–300 passports daily.

“With these strategic infrastructural investments, which did not cost a kobo to the government, the NIS can now personalise over 1,000 passports in one hour,” Tunji-Ojo stated.

“To put it into perspective, before this development, the service could only record an average of 250 to 300 passports daily. But today, under five work hours, the service can now deliver about 4,500 to 5,000 passports,” he added.

The minister described the achievement as a milestone that has, for the first time in six decades, centralised passport production, putting an end to the practice of processing passports at multiple centres across the world.