Over 148,000 passports have been awaiting collection nationwide since 2020, according to data obtained by Saturday PUNCH from the Nigeria Immigration Service.
The NIS Public Relations Officer, Anthony Akuneme, revealed this in an interview with Saturday PUNCH at the Service headquarters in Abuja.
“We have precisely 148,000 uncollected passports nationwide from different locations,”
On January 11, the NIS disclosed that Lagos State topped the list of unclaimed passports numbering 40,000, while its Edo Zonal Office accounted for 24,000 unclaimed passports.
Akuneme also noted that the NIS could not reach the owners, some of who input incorrect contact details at the point of registration.
He revealed that the Comptroller-General, Isa Idris, had deployed a team of senior officers nationwide to reach the owners of the abandoned passports.
However, he said that passports whose owners could not be reached at the end of the exercise would not be destroyed as they remain the property of the Federal Government.
“We are not going to destroy them. They are still government property. They may be reused.
“We (the NIS management) will have to discuss whether or not they are reusable. But for now, we have precisely 148,000 uncollected passports nationwide from different locations,” he said.
On the ongoing efforts to decongest its shelves of unclaimed passports, the spokesperson said a team of Assistant Comptrollers-General had been deployed to all its zones.
He said, “The Comptroller-General has sent out top officers of the rank of Assistant Comptrollers-Generals. That’s to show you how serious the assignment is. They will go to each zone to ensure that these passports get to their owners by whatever means they can devise.
“So, they’re going around all the passport offices in each zone to devise a template with the passport officers and the controllers of those states and the zonal coordinators to design a template whereby the owners of these passports must come and collect them.
“This involves creating awareness in local languages and local radio stations, town unions for people who applied for passports at some time, who probably think that the passports were not issued to come and check for their passports and collect them.”
He blamed the use of third-party applicants as the cause of the build-up, saying over 70 per cent of the passport applicants did not apply by themselves.
He added, “We don’t mind if they submit the right information, but we mind when they charge people N150,000 for passports and those people think it is the Immigration Service that is charging them. The cost of a passport is no more than N27,000.”
To permanently address the challenges posed by the incorrect contact information submitted by applicants, the NIS said it was partnering with the National Identity Management Commission.
(PUNCH)
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