Stop Subsidising International Passports’ Cost, Group Tells FG

A political pressure group, the Niger Delta Rights Advocates (NDRA), has called on the federal government to discontinue the subsidy regime for international passports in the country.

It said the Ministry of Interior should rather channel the over N15 billion spent on covering this subsidy to inmates welfare at the Nigeria Correctional Services (NCoS) and ammunitions for the Nigeria Immigration Services (NIS).

NDRA, in a statement made available to newsmen in Port Harcourt yesterday, however expressed satisfaction with the efforts made by the current Minister of Interior, Dr Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, in clearing over N25billion obligation incurred by his predecessors in office on the importation of Nigerian passports alone.

The statement, which was signed by the group’s national chairman, Bright Ngolo, reads in part: “We believe that it runs against simple economic reasoning for Nigeria to continue to subsidize international passports which are dollar denominated based on import requirements, whereas the huge sums can actually be deployed to better uses such as raising the standard of living for inmates at the 255 correctional facilities across the country.

“Since international passports are ordinarily not the basic means of identification for an average Nigerian, we reason that more Nigerians be given the latitude of being adequately captured on the national database through the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), scale down on the rush for international passports since this only serves as a travel document for Nigerians living abroad or planning to do their businesses abroad.

“This will ease off the pressure and the age long corruption that has greeted the rush for our international passport documents. Again, Nigerians wishing to travel within the West African sub-region have the option of acquiring an ECOWAS card.

“NDRA further suggests that the Interior Ministry ensures that the new price regime scheduled to kick off on September 1 2025 does not affect Nigerians who already have initiated their passport application processes prior to the official announcements. The NIS must ensure its passport clearance officers diligently clears the backlog of passport applications it received before September 1 2025.”