October 23, (THEWILL) – The Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) has said over 3000 international passports are awaiting collection by applicants in its Command in Kwara State.
The outgoing Comptroller of Passports in the Command, Baba Aliyu, who disclosed this to newsmen in Ilorin on the sidelines of a retirement party in his honour, said the applicants could not be contacted on phone numbers provided on their applications.
Aliyu urged the Federal Government to initiate sanctions on applicants who failed to collect their passports after processing,
“We usually send SMS through the contact address and phone numbers provided by the applicants, but some messages fail due to the fact that the numbers are fake.
“Some applicants may have died, while others may refuse to collect it because they could not meet up with what they wanted to use it for. Whatever the reasons may be, passports should not be abandoned as they serve a lot of functions besides being travelling documents,” he said.
Aliyu, however, said the abandoned passports were not only for people of Kwara but for applicants from different parts of Nigeria.
He urged applicants to visit the immigration office to collect their passports.
Aliyu, who said it takes just two weeks to acquire a passport as well as renew an expired one, urged Nigerians seeking to acquire an international passport to visit the website of the service at immigration.gov.ng to apply.
