Immigration says no passport without identity number in 2018

The Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) will stop issuing Nigerian passports to anyone without a National Identification Number issued by the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), starting from 2018.

This was disclosed by the agency's Comptroller-General, Mohammed Babandede after a meeting about database harmonisation at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, on Tuesday, August 1, 2017.

He said the new measure with address concerns about poor data collection in the country, and would help the ease of doing business in the country.

The Comptroller-General said, "The bulk lies on our entire table. It is the harmonization of data and requires all of us to act but the biggest problem we are facing is that everybody is deploying his own technology.

"There is a practical commitment to this; we have agreed that from Jan. 1, 2018 anybody who is going to apply for Nigerian Passport, whether renewal or fresh, must first have a NIMC number."

"Why we are doing this is we want to ease business for Nigeria."

"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 Immigrations."

"Once you give us your NIMC number we will collect the bio metric from NIMC and produce your passport.

"All NIMC staff can work in our passport office so when you come to get the passport you can also get the National identity card.

"The NIMC 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 Senior Special Assistant to the President on ICT, Lanre Osibona, also disclosed after the committee's meeting that the national identification registration had moved from five million in 2015 to about 20 million in 2017.