The government is continuously working to improve the security screening process to ensure travellers have a smooth and efficient screening experience.
Minister of Interior, Dr. Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo said this will be done while maintaining the highest standards of security to keep Nigerians safe.
Speaking during The Big Interview – Episode 2 organised by the State House, Abuja, hosted by O’tega Ogra, Dr. Tunji-Ojo highlighted reforms being undertaken to transforming the ministry and its agencies, from prison reforms, enhanced border security, national assets protection, and fair remuneration for personnel to improved emergency responses and streamlined immigration processes.
According to him, extensive reforms and upgrades have been initiated and were capable of transforming key sectors that impact the nation’s security and efficiency.
He said: “The Ministry of Interior is responsible for citizenship Integrity, enhancement of internal security amongst other things. We have the Nigerian Correctional Service (NCS), Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS), and Federal Fire Service and of course the National Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC). When we came on board last year, we began with stocktaking. As professionals we had to spend time planning so execution will be easy. We’ve been able to do that across all our agencies.
“We have short term, medium and long-term plans. We have been able to achieve our short term goals that we had for ourselves. For example in NIS, the short term goal was to clear our backlog of over 204,000 passports that we inherited.
“We cleared that slightly in less than 3 weeks. We made sure that the passport backlog has become something of the past that will never happen again. We went through our automation process which is basically broken into three different stages. In terms of our short-term targets, we have achieved the first two.
“The medium term Target is of course the third one which is where we are now. The first one is of course automating the application process- that we have started. Today, we have saved the government of billions of naira. We used to pay for archiving of documents. Today, we have automated that process. Applicants now upload their documents by themselves.
“We used to pay N200 per applicant for archiving about 3 million passports a year. That is about N600 million. So we have saved the government that money and yet it’s even more convenient because people can now do that on their own.”
