NOTICE OF A PUBLIC HOLIDAY

This week makes it one month (4 weeks ago) that I took my little cousins to Ottawa for their passport renewals. The whole of these were in place: a verified NIN, correctly completed self-addressed envelopes with the old passports retained inside of them, and the tracking numbers of Canada Post were carefully detached for possible tracking. All hopes were high that if they could follow the procedures, the passports would be out within 2 and four weeks. After the third day, they tracked the Nigerian immigration website ( track.immigration.gov.ng) and the search revealed that all was well ( at least NIN was successfully verified) and that the stage was in production. A further search (using information from individuals who recently collected their passports from the Ottawa embassy) showed that the Nigerian immigration website tracking does not usually go beyond the ' in production processing' stage. Here are my questions to the passport processing unit at the Nigerian embassy; (1) Why not provide an update about processed passports on this website as it was being done before so that Nigerians can know the true status of their passports? Of course, the Nigerian Immigration tracking website has been designed to do this but the tracking only stops at the 'production in process' stage of the tracking. Knowing that this is the case, why not help Nigerians by providing the final information the Nigerian immigration tracking website is not providing by letting us know the dates that have been processed? (2) Why is the Ottawa passport processing unit still not observing the new timeline directive for passport processing being given by the Minister of Interior, Dr. Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, while counterparts in Nigeria are working so hard to meet up? The current situation is that passport offices in Nigeria have a faster processing time despite the higher number of passports they contend with. In his interview with Channels TV last week, the Minister specifically mentioned passport challenges Nigerians are facing in Canada. I am glad that the challenges Nigerians face here with respect to passport has gotten to him and the right attention is being given. (3) Why is there no effective communication channel between your clients(Nigerians) and the embassy? The purported email (generalinquiries@) usually takes DAYS or weeks before any reply is received (if any is received). Could the webpage information handler of the Ottawa embassy please respond to these enquiries? Thanks