Immigration reveals close to 100,000 booklets remain unclaimed by owners

The Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) reports that around 97,000 passport booklets issued were uncollected in the 36 states across the country, including the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).

This was disclosed by Tony Akuneme, the NIS comptroller of immigration, in an interview with NAN on Friday in Abuja.

The service recently found that half of the uncollected passports were in Lagos State, according to Mr. Akuneme, and there was also a risk that half of the owners of the uncollected passports could not be located because of a lack of legal documentation due to third-party involvement.

He also mentioned that the essence of a state of emergency declaration was to draw the attention of the media to alert people unaware their passports were ready for collection.

“Some of them engaged agents to help them in their passport processing, and these agents might be doing for a lot of persons. They end up dropping wrong contacts and thereby making it difficult to reach out to the owners of these passports when they are ready for collection. This is a big challenge,” added the NIS official.

READ ALSO:Immigration Service blames CBN for scarcity of passports in Nigeria

The acting NIS comptroller general, Caroline Adepoju, had recently declared a state of emergency on passport issues across the country.

Mr Akuneme said the NIS recently discovered that most applicants’ complaints also concern human and technical factors, including slow internet speed.

“That’s how she came about that term of declaring a state of emergency in the passport issues. When the acting CG assumed office, she made it very clear that she was going to focus on Passport reforms and staff welfare,” he said.

He added, “So, we went to Lagos state governor to help in terms of giving us office space where we can set up front desk offices and immediately, the governor was very positive in his response.”

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