The Minister of Interior, Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, has given a deadline of January 1 for private-sector partners of the Nigeria Immigration Service to activate pending passport offices abroad.

Tunji-Ojo, who gave the ultimatum Wednesday during a live appearance on Channels Television’s Politics Today, noted that the failure of contractors to implement passport officers was partly responsible for the backlog of passports in several countries, including the United Kingdom.

“What we’re looking at, for example, in Canada: for a start, we should have about three, four offices. We might not, at this particular point in time, be able to say, ‘We want to spend money to open all these things’ but we can partner with the private sector,” he said.

“Incidentally, that service – the passport front office – is actually in the contract signed by the NIS with some service providers over a time ago but up till now, not yet activated. And I have told them, ‘By January 1, God bless you, if you do not activate these services.’”

According to him, failure to activate the passport offices amounts to the contractors lacking the capacity to implement their contracts.

“And you will not hold millions of Nigerians in the diaspora to ransom by not being able to provide them the service you ought to provide,” the minister added.