FG to provide E-gates for four major airports, exercise part of border control, safety, says Minister

…NIS completes data centre, to begin passport home delivery

…107, 000 yet to be picked up by applicants

Minister of Interior, Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo on Friday inspected the User Acceptance Test (UAT) of the E-gate already installed at Terminal 2 of the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos which he said will be completed Monday next week.

Also, the Minister disclosed that the four major airports across the country name The Lagos airport is the second major airport in Nigeria to be installed with state-of-the-art safety and security devices weeks after the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja was fitted with the newly installed electronic gates (e-gates).

The minister emphasised that the e-gates aimed to streamline passenger movement, eliminating human interfaces and bureaucratic hurdles.

Deployment plans include 29 e-gates for Lagos, four for Enugu and Kano each, and five for Port Harcourt. Tunji-Ojo highlighted rigorous testing of airport infrastructure and command centres, ensuring fake and expired passports are rejected while genuine ones are processed seamlessly.

He said, “What they are doing now is called the User Acceptance Test (UAT) which is the last stage and by Monday morning, this wing will have been completed 100 per cent. As it is, it is already installed. So, we just need to align the sensor. From here, we will move to the D-Wing which has four gates because we can’t block the three entrances simultaneously. We can’t work simultaneously because of the ease of passengers.”

“So, we have to be taking one after the other. Our assurance is that by next weekend, the D Wing will have been fully completed. We will then be left with the E wing which has eight gates. This may take us another maximum of two weeks. In the next three weeks from now, Lagos will be 100 per cent good to go, then, we will move to other airports like Kano, Enugu and Port Harcourt which each has four gates. This will be faster. Lagos airport alone has 21 gates. Lagos is where you have the major traffic.”

Tunji-Ojo noted that President Bola Tinubu was very passionate about the project; hence the desire by him to introduce e-gates to many of the country’s major aerodromes, stressing that the electronic gates are important because of the enhancement of national security.

This, he reiterated is connected to all the data base all over the world, saying,  “We are making life easier for Nigeria and at the same time securing the country. The passengers get more comfortable and it’s more convenient but at the same time the nation is secured.”

“Secondly, ease of doing business. It also helps with the perception of the government. When you travel to New York and you get to JFK, as a foreigner, you are in the queue. The American carries his passport and goes in easily. That gives him lots of confidence that he is in his country. This is called sweet experience and this president is bent on giving Nigerians the sweet experience. It is about changing the narrative and telling us that things we see in other places can work in Nigeria.”

“This is not government-funded; it is a public-private partnership. It is part of our border control management solution which is being deployed. Mr President will not rest until every inch of our border space is protected. This is the Air border. Yesterday we did a demo of even our land and sea border and we are already deploying solutions for that “.

Asked why it still takes long for Nigerians to get their international passports, the Minister said the slight delay was a result of the building of the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) data centre from scratch to be able to keep the integrity of data and national security intact.

“This is more important. It is about national security and I can assure you that completed the data centre which is one of the biggest in Nigeria. It is comparable to anyone you can find anywhere in the world. The command and control centre which we have built, even the International Air Transport Association (IATA) came to Nigeria and said this is comparable to even the best in the world.”

“We have built the data centre, sorted the passport delivery solution and done the final presentation in terms of technology deliverables and the tracking solution which will all be embedded in the application we have, so we don’t create multiple lines of failure. We have done all these and by June we should be able to start. We will not start from everywhere because if you overload the system, you can cause system damage. So we would start home delivery for Lagos, Port Harcourt, Kano and Abuja. For the Diaspora, we will start with the U.S. and the United Kingdom. We would first test it and see that it works”.

The Comptroller-General of Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS), Kemi Nanna Nandap said over 107, 000 passports that have been produced are yet to be picked up by applicants, urging them to proceed to their offices to collect them.

Nandap

“If you have applied for passports, please go and pick your passports. We have over 107,000 passports that have been produced and applicants have not picked them up”, she added.

Wole Shadare