The Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) has appealed to Nigerians who applied for a passport in Oyo state to pick up their document. The NIS said 7,500 passports are awaiting collection at its offices in the state.

Assistant comptroller-general in charge of planning and statistics at the NIS Headquarters, Dora Amahian, stated this when she visited the office in Ibadan on Wednesday.

“We have about 7,500 uncollected passports in Oyo state, and we do not want them to expire in our hands because if they do, applicants will have to pay money for fresh applications,” said Ms Amahian.

Ms Amahian noted that some of the passports had been ready but were not collected in the last one to two years.

She said the NIS had been sending the applicants text messages and that only a few had been responding to such calls and lamented that some applicants submitted wrong phone numbers making SMS sent to them remain undelivered.

“In times past, there had been unpalatable comments about how applicants were made to wait endlessly for passport issuance. We want to tell you that NIS has been issuing passports, but people don’t come to pick them up,” Ms Amahian explained.

She appealed to those who had applied for passports in the last six months to nine months in Oyo to pick up their passports.

Ms Amahian assured Nigerians that passports would be issued to fresh applicants within six weeks, while renewals would be in three weeks. 

(NAN)