As part of efforts to facilitate thorough screening, the Federal Government (FG) has said that visa applications will be available online before March 1.
The Minister of Interior, Dr. Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo who disclosed this on ‘X Space’ hosted by social commentator and influencer, Dr. Segun Awosanya (Segalink) on Monday revealed that a centralised visa approval centre has been established to streamline the visa process, ensuring consistency, improved national security, and reduced corruption.
His words: “The visa approval centre is also an achievement for this administration because we also now have a centralised visa approval centre.
“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.”
He reaffirmed that a unified data centre is operational at the Bola Ahmed Tinubu Technology Innovation Complex (BATTIC), located within 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. Before then, we had an issue because we inherited a NIS 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 remarked.
He explained that Nigeria cannot proliferate the issuance of its security document because it is a gross violation of due process.
Mr. Tunji-Ojo added: “And so, 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.”
