Interior Minister Conducts Surprise Inspection of Abuja Passport Office, Condemns Operational Inefficiency
On Tuesday, the Minister of Interior, Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, conducted a surprise inspection of the Nigeria Immigration Service passport facility located in Gwagwalada, Abuja. During this unscheduled visit, he voiced strong disapproval regarding the slow pace of passport issuance and strictly advised members of the public to refuse any requests for unauthorized payments.
The Minister took time to evaluate the workflow within the specialized sections for VIPs and children, where he challenged staff members on why operations had not fully ramped up well past the official opening hour. While interacting directly with both the immigration personnel and the people waiting for services, Tunji-Ojo gathered firsthand accounts of the challenges faced by the public and warned them against offering any funds beyond the statutory fees, maintaining that the cost of the service had been entirely settled during the application process.
He specifically ordered that staff must cease demanding illegal contributions under the guise of purchasing materials like paper or fueling generators with diesel. He asserted that since Nigerians have already fulfilled their financial requirements for these documents, they are entitled to receive thorough and committed service from the government.
Furthermore, he signaled his disappointment that the fast-track units had processed so few people hours into the workday. He noted that by 9:30 am, the desks should have already cleared several applicants, especially considering the large number of citizens he observed waiting on the ground floor. He concluded by reminding the officials that their primary mandate is to ensure the system operates with maximum efficiency.
Tunji-Ojo challenged the personnel regarding the speed of the enrollment and biometric capturing phases, performing a quick calculation to demonstrate that each individual should only require a few minutes for processing. He pointed out that if a single enrollment takes approximately three minutes, then a group of seven applicants should be completed in just twenty-one minutes.
During the exchange, immigration staff confessed that despite an official opening time of 8:00 am, they did not actually begin working until roughly 9:00 am when the generator was finally started. One official acknowledged their scheduled start time but explained that the power was only turned on after the applicants had already arrived and gathered.
The minister strongly condemned the current operational method where staff wait to finish enrolling the entire crowd before starting the biometric capture process. He argued that these tasks should be handled concurrently to minimize the time people spend waiting. He noted that such a bottleneck is illogical, especially since many applicants have professional obligations and other daily responsibilities to attend to. He questioned the staff’s reasoning, demanding to know why they insisted on enrolling every single person before moving on to the capturing stage.
The Minister characterized the current state of affairs as intolerable, emphasizing that such bottlenecks completely undermine the core objective of public service. He rebuked the officials for squandering the public’s valuable time, asserting that time is a costly and precious resource, and that such inefficiency would not be condoned.
Furthermore, Tunji-Ojo criticized the fact that the VIP and Children’s departments were being left largely vacant. He pointed out that staff should have proactively redirected applicants from more crowded areas to these underused sections to alleviate the bottleneck, noting that utilizing available space for the general public would incur no extra cost.
In a final call for accountability, the Minister reminded the officers that passport facilities must be managed with a focus on both productivity and equity. He declared that no citizen should be treated as more important than another, stating that the immigration uniform represents a commitment to sacrifice and that their fundamental role is to serve the Nigerian people.
