Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, minister of interior, says many foreigners possess Nigerian passport, causing global embarrassment and wrongful attribution of crimes to the country’s citizens.
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The minister spoke on Wednesday when he featured on the Morning Show, a programme on Arise Television.
He said the prevalence of foreigners holding Nigerian passport has made pre-data documentation necessary, as the integrity of the country’s passport cannot be fully relied upon.
The minister said passport must be easily accessible by citizens, adding that they serve as vital security and sovereign documents of the country.
“Passport is beyond a travel document; it’s a sovereign document of state. It belongs to the Nigerian government,” he said.
“For us to be sure that you are a Nigerian, upload your certificate of origin, out of which we have people we have across the 774 local web called the DVOs —Document Verification Officers. These people will go and authenticate those documents.
”Immediately you upload, it gets sent real time to the local government where this thing is from. They authenticate it to be sure that you are a Nigerian and is getting a Nigerian passport.
“The embarrassment that we get as a country by people who are not Nigerians carrying Nigerian passport is out of this world.
”Most of the crimes that they say Nigerians are committing abroad, I say this clearly, a lot of them are not Nigerians.
“They are carrying Nigerian passport, if you do not have a certificate of origin, how am I supposed to be sure that you are a Nigerian?
“What is the evidence, what is the evidential facts to attest to the fact that you are a Nigerian?”
Tunji Ojo said inheriting data for renewal would eliminate the need for the current measures, and citizens only need to upload pre-data documents once.
“So for me, I want to make passport easier, but not at the expense of national security; not at the expense of the integrity of the country,” he added.
“And I think these are desperate actions that we must take to sanitize the system.”
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