Posted by By Mudiaga Affe on
The Nigerian Immigration Services has said that the old Nigerian passport, known as machine-readable passport, will cease to be accepted in 2010, just as it has stepped up drive to speed up the distribution of the newly-introduced e-passport to intending applicants.
The Nigerian Immigration Services has said that the old Nigerian passport, known as machine-readable passport, will cease to be accepted in 2010, just as it has stepped up drive to speed up the distribution of the newly-introduced e-passport to intending applicants.
The Service Public Relations Officer, Ekpedeme King, who gave this indication in a chat with newsmen on Sunday, said that arrangements had been put in place to see the eventual phasing out of the machine-readable passport.
'The appeal we are making now to Nigerians is that they should remain where they are, if you are holding a machine-readable passport that has not expired, continue to make use of it. It has a time frame of three years to lapse. You are not under compulsion to migrate to the e-passport until the next three years. So, if your own is still valid, continue to use it, all the missions are aware," he explained.
King further explained that the new e-passport is the latest technology introduced by the International Civil Aviation Organisation, which is already in use in advanced countries like United States, United Kingdom, India, Malaysia and others, while Nigeria is the first country in Africa to embrace the concept.
The NIS spokesman went on to state reasons why Nigeria is embracing this change, 'When former President Olusegun Obasanjo visited Malaysia sometime in 2000, he saw the e-passport and immediately embraced it.
That, according to him, prompted the NIS to go back to the drawing board and adopted it to suit our peculiar situation.
'The e-passport is designed with some cultural features to make it unique to Nigeria; the major thing about it is the electronic chip that is embedded in it. What the immigration did is to re-design it in such a way that the data page is now the front cover of the passport.