Minister of Interior, Abdulrahman Dambazau, and the Comptroller General of Nigeria Immigration Service, Mohammed Babandede, has presented a new 10-year diplomatic passport to President Muhammadu Buhari and Vice President Yemi Osinbajo.
Officials of NIS had earlier captured the biometrics of the president and the vice president shortly before the commencement of an extraordinary meeting of the Federal Executive Council inside the council chamber of the presidential villa.
The NIS boss Babandede had announced last year that Nigeria will begin using the new passport by December 2018. He said:
“Ten years after the enrollment of the e-passport system, we need to improve the security features.” “You can’t keep documents for 10 years without seeing decreased values in them, so we are improving the security features which would raise the standards of the passports,” he was quoted to have said on Channels TV.
Apart from the 10-year validity, the new passport, according to the NIS has enhanced security and is ”weather friendly”.
The Immigration Service said the new passport has polycarbonate technology that eliminates damage and that it now saves Nigerians in diaspora the time needed to frequently visit Nigerian embassies for new passports.
