Nigeria joins global passport directory, ends authentication glitches

The Nigeria Immigration Service on Wednesday announced the successful importation of all of Nigeria’s Country Signing Certificate Authorities into the International Civil Aviation Organisation’s Public Key Directory, resolving passport authentication issues that had affected Nigerian travellers at foreign borders.

The development means Nigerian passports can now be seamlessly verified by border control systems in all member states of the ICAO Public Key Directory, ending the technical challenge that had subjected some passport holders to delays and additional screening.

The Comptroller-General of the Nigeria Immigration Service, Kemi Nandap, completed the process during a ceremony at the ICAO headquarters in Montreal, Canada.

This was disclosed in a statement issued on Wednesday by the Service Public Relations Officer, Akinsola Akinlabi, titled, ‘Nigeria Strengthens Global Passport Authentication, Imports CSCAs into the ICAO Public Key Directory.’

According to Akinlabi, the exercise established the required chain of trust for Nigerian electronic passports within the global verification system.

“With the completion of the import process of all Nigeria’s existing CSCAs on the ICAO Public Key Directory to establish a chain of trust, Nigerian Passports can now be verified seamlessly by border control systems in all ICAO PKD member states,” the statement read.

The ICAO Public Key Directory is the global platform through which member countries share the cryptographic certificates used to verify the authenticity of electronic passports.

Without a country’s signing certificates on the directory, border control systems in other countries may be unable to authenticate the chip embedded in an electronic passport, resulting in manual checks, secondary screening or the inability to use automated e-gates.

The immigration service noted that the authentication gap had contributed to difficulties experienced by some Nigerian passport holders at airports in Europe, North America and other parts of the world.

It added that the Ministry of Interior, led by the Minister, Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, coordinated the exercise, describing the development as a reflection of the Federal Government’s commitment to strengthening secure digital identity management and international border security cooperation.