There was protest on Wednesday at the Nigerian Consulate in New York, United States of America, by passport applicants who could not get the biometric processes of the passport renewals done since on Monday.
Reports say the applicants have, since on Monday, besieged the Consulate daily, only to be told on Wednesday that a server failure in the Nigerian Embassy in Washington was responsible for the problem.
The Consulate General of Nigeria, New York, through a statement dated November 14, 2023, titled:
SERVICE DISRUPTION DUE TO FAULTY SERVER, the Consulate informed the applicants that “the consulate had not been able to process the biometrics of passport applicants since November 13, 2023. This is as a result of technical challenges being experienced by the server in our embassy in Washington,
DC.”
The Consulate further stated: “While efforts are being made to rectify the situation, applicants that have appointments for up to Thursday, November 16, 2023, are advised to confirm if the situation has been normalized before they come to the Consulate.
“The Consulate will reach out to individuals concerned through their emails. Any inconvenience this may have caused is deeply regretted.”
However, the displeased applicants said the response of the Consulate came as an after-thought, which they should have done before the applicants came from their far flung destinations in the United States to congregate at the Consulate.
The complainants said the Consulate should step up and wake up to the responsibility instead of causing embarrassment to Nigerians in a foreign land.
They insisted that the Consulate needs to take their job seriously, stressing that what happened since Monday is a national embarrassment.
- Media Report