The Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) has stated that the President Muhammadu Buhari administration is considering to extend the validity period for international passports from its current 5 years to 10 years.
Muhammad Babandede, the Comptroller-General of the NIS, on Saturday, told reporters in his office that Nigerians should expect an announcement on the policy changes in the coming months.
“We have submitted a memo to the president and we believe we’ll get a positive response to that soon,” Babandede said.
The immigration chief also revealed that the reason for the policy change was the federal government’s response to several complaints from Nigerians and the international community.
“We have received complaints that passports only take five years. The international community is not happy, wondering why passports will only be five years. They’re saying it should be 10 years and we’re already considering that.
We need to make sure that we have age validity expansion. For example, in some places in the world, they say if you’re below the age of 18, you can have five-year validity passport. But if you’re above the age of 18, you can have 10-year validity because your physical features may not change again within 10 years,” he said.
Premium Times gathered that several citizens had demanded that the NIS should consider reversing to the old policy that Nigeria had in place before 2007.
Until on July 27, 2007, when the e-passport was adopted, the Nigerian passport was valid for 10 years with additional five years validity for renewal.