The Minister of Interior, retired Lt.- Gen. Abdulrahman Dambazau, on Thursday in Abuja inaugurated a new e-Citibiz Automation Call Centre for ease of doing business in the country.

The News Agency of Nigeria reports that the e- Citibiz automation call centre is a project to ensure that Citizenship and Business Department in the ministry is automated to ease delivery of services.

It is in line with the “Presidential Order of 2017’’ to address the ease of doing business in Nigeria and to promote economic development.

The executive order is geared toward the promotion of transparency and efficiency in the country’s business environment.

Dambazau said the use of the automation call centre would reduce unnecessary contact with people and deliver services in good time.

The minister expressed happiness that the project had been completed, adding “this is one of the moment I have been waiting for since three years”.

“What that means is that with this call centre, there will be no direct contact with applicants from outside.

“So, I would not want to see anybody coming in here to inquire about anything because we have all the necessary platforms for service delivery

“It also means that we must keep the period we have identified, if we say application should not take more than one week, we must keep to it so that nobody will even find it necessary to make complaints.

“We are doing this not only in the interest of Nigerians but the world. We are also doing this in order to encourage investors,’’ the minister said.

According to him, if you are encouraging development, you are encouraging security.

The minister thanked President Muhammadu Buhari for the provision of fund for the project.

Dambazau made a test call on the facility and said the project was the ministry’s contribution toward the implementation of the presidential order.

The Director of Citizenship and Business Department of the ministry, Hajia Aisha Rufai, expressed gratitude to the minister for his commitment and thoroughness to see that the project was completed.

Rufai commended staff of the ministry for their cooperation to ensure that the project was completed.

Mr Joel Adi, the Managing Director and CEO of Anchor Data Ware Solution, gave a brief description of how the facility works, and how customers could access the centre.

Adi said the facility had five agents to attend to enquirers by customers with options in Hausa, Ibo and Yoruba languages as well as in English and pidgin.

He said that updates would be carried out by those agents, explaining that customers or applicants could register on platform with a valid e-mail address and valid telephone number.

He gave the website address as: https.//ecitibiz.Interior.gov.ng. (NAN)