NIS partners NTDC on ease of doing tourism business

Comptroller General of the Nigerian Immigration Service, Muhammad Babandede has revealed plans to digitalise tourist visas before the end of the year.

He assured that the digitalisation of tourist visas, which is ongoing, would further improve tourism and the ease of doing business in Nigeria.

Babandede made the disclosure when the Director-General of the Nigerian Tourism Development Corporation (NTDC), Mr. Folorunsho Coker and his team paid him a courtesy visit in his office, recently.

He explained that the tourist visa would be web-based, saying that “everything will be digitalized with no physical contact with anybody. Once you apply online, upload your application, submit, pay and get approval, you start coming and within 24-48 hours, you get your tourist’s visa”

The immigration boss also explained that Nigeria is quite liberal with tourists’ visa for people coming to the country for religious tourism. “We give them visa-on-arrival for certain churches because we know their spending will boost our economy,” he said.

However, Babandede pointed out that there are challenges in making tourists visa liberal because tourism has become the weakest link for entry into Nigeria, but tourism visa will be possible without compromising national security.

He then promised to look into seeping the access for visa- on -arrival to tourists once certain parameters where in place, adding that the migration information data analysis system recently launched by the Minister of Interior, Rauf Aregbesola will assist with statistics of tourists visiting Nigeria.

“The MIDAS will benefit a lot of people and organizations. Tourism will benefit from this, we are hereby inviting the NTDC to feed tourism content and activity into the MIDAS system for overall best tourism experience and sustainable economic development in Nigeria,” he said.

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Coker, earlier in his speech congratulated the immigration boss and his team on the disruptive innovations in the visa process, especially the visa-on-arrival improvements.

The NTDC boss also congratulated the immigration chief on the contributions of the service to the rise in Nigeria’s ranking on the ease of doing business.

He noted that the lack of human inter-phase on the visa-on-arrival platform shows that the way forward lies in disruptive digital technologies for the acceleration of the development of Nigeria despite the current challenges

While emphasizing the import of visa-on-arrival for tourists into Nigeria, Coker noted that the ease of tourists coming into Nigeria and doing business in the country lies heavily on the successes of the visa-on-arrival for tourists.