The Federal Government has announced that all visa applications will be processed online by March 1. Minister of Interior, Dr. Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, revealed this on Monday, January 20, during an interactive session hosted on ‘X Spaces’ by influencer Dr. Segun Awosanya.
Highlighting advancements in the visa approval process, the minister noted the establishment of a centralised visa approval centre aimed at enhancing national security, ensuring uniformity, and reducing corruption.
“The visa approval centre is also an achievement for this administration because we also now have a centralised visa approval centre,” he said. “This will stem corruption, ensure national security, and merge the visa regime to ensure uniformity. Before March 1st, all visa application systems will be online to ensure proper vetting.”
Dr. Tunji-Ojo also discussed the development of a harmonised data centre housed at the Bola Ahmed Tinubu Technology Innovation Complex (BATTIC), located at the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) headquarters in Sauka, Abuja.
“We were able to build one of the biggest data centres in the history of Nigeria, which is the 8.3-petabyte centre,” he said. “Before then, we had an issue because we inherited a Nigeria Immigration Service that had no data centre, where the data of Nigerians was obviously being saved in private capacities with various contractors, and that was a gross contravention of the Data Protection Act.”
The minister emphasized the significance of consolidating Nigeria’s security document issuance process to align with due process and data protection standards.
“Nigeria cannot proliferate the issuance of its security document because it is a gross violation of due process,” he explained. “We decided to find a lasting solution to that, and we started by promising Nigerians a 1.4-petabyte data centre, but we ended up delivering an 8.3-petabyte data centre—one of the largest in the world.”