The United States Federal Government has resolved the passport production crisis, and three missions have resumed passport services. A public notice was posted in the Nigerian embassy in Washington DC, informing all passport applicants who were scheduled for biometrics from Monday, November 13 to Thursday, November 16, to come to the embassy on any of the days from Monday, November 20 to Wednesday, November 22, 2023. The rescheduling was due to the internet outage experienced at the embassy, and the embassy regrets any inconvenience it might have caused.
Confirming this development, a source in the embassy said in New York on Sunday that the problem was resolved over the weekend.
“The system is back over the weekend. The experts worked tirelessly to resolve it and we are back. We fixed it yesterday (Saturday) and tested it. The system is back and all the centres are fine, both New York and Atlanta. The server in DC is collected to Atlanta and New York so whatever happens to our server affects other missions.’’
The source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that the problem was internet-related and not a server issue, noting that since the server was connected to the embassy internet, anything that happened to the internet disconnects the other centres too.
According to the source, the experts in Nigeria worked with local ICT experts in the embassy and they were able to fix it.
The country’s three missions in the U.S. are the Consulates-General of Nigeria in New York and Atlanta, and the Embassy of Nigeria in Washington DC.
The embassy in Washington DC is the only passport production centre in the U.S., while the consulates take biometrics in their missions and take the same to Washington DC for passport production.
The Organisation for the Advancement of Nigerians and its 20 partner organisations in New York had earlier appealed to the Federal Government to provide passport production machines for the missions in Atlanta and New York.
“The New York consulate has jurisdiction over the highest number of states and accepts the largest number of applicants from across the United States. It boggles the mind to understand why two passport printing machines are located in Washington with none in New York and in Atlanta,’’ the associations noted in a statement.
The New York Jurisdiction comprises 20 states of Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Nebraska, Ohio and North Dakota.
Others are South Dakota, Rhode Island, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Vermont and Pennsylvania.