Nigeria’s Minister of Interior, Dr. Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, has unveiled plans to establish a centralised authentication and verification system for all travel-related documents in the country.
This announcement was made during a high-level meeting in Abuja with UK Minister of State, David Hanson, alongside representatives from the UK Home Office, the National Crime Agency, and the British High Commission.
The proposed system aims to address rising cases of immigration and document fraud, particularly at Nigeria’s borders. Dr. Tunji-Ojo highlighted the inefficiency of the current method where each submitted document must be manually verified with its issuing agency—sometimes involving 20 different agencies for 20 documents.
“The absence of a real-time, unified verification system is one of the biggest enablers of document fraud,” he said.
Under the new initiative, passports, certificates, bank statements, and other travel-related documents will be verifiable in real time through a central platform—streamlining checks, enhancing national security, and bolstering international trust in Nigerian documents.
The minister also expressed Nigeria’s readiness to lead the development of a regional strategy for border control, warning that one-size-fits-all approaches won’t work in Africa due to varied migration challenges across regions.
“To tackle a heterogeneous problem with a homogeneous approach will not work,” Tunji-Ojo emphasized.
This reform signals Nigeria’s commitment to modernising immigration processes, aligning with global standards, and deepening collaboration with international partners on border security.