The Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) says about 97,000 passport booklets issued were uncollected in the 36 states nationwide, including Federal Capital Territory (FCT).

NIS comptroller of immigration, Tony Akuneme, said this in an interview on Friday in Abuja.

Mr Akuneme said the service recently discovered that Lagos State had half of the uncollected passports, and there was also a danger that half of the owners of the uncollected passports could not be reached due to lack of proper documentation because of 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.

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.” 

(NAN)