By Adedapo Adesanya
The Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) has disclosed that about 97,000 passport booklets were uncollected in the 36 states, including Federal Capital Territory (FCT).
This was disclosed to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) by the Service Public Relations Officer (SPRO) Comptroller of Immigration, Mr Tony Akuneme, on Friday.
Mr Akuneme said that the service recently found out that Lagos State had half of the uncollected passports.
He said that there was also a danger that half of the owners of the uncollected passports could not be reached due to a lack of proper documentation because of third-party involvement.
He also said that the essence of a recent state of emergency declaration was to draw the attention of the media so that a lot of people that were oblivious could know that their passports were ready for collection.
He said, “Some of them engaged agents to help them in their passport processing, and these agents might be doing this 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,” he said.
The SPRO said that the service recently found out that most applicants’ complaints ranged from human factor to technical factors, which included the slow speed of internet services, which led the Acting Comptroller General, NIS, Mrs Caroline Adepoju, to declare a state of emergency on passport issuance across the country.
According to him, the CG didn’t want to leave anyone in doubt as to the issue of passport processing, with this being her core area of interest.
“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.
According to him, the Lagos state Governor, Mr Babajide Sanwo-Olu, is willing to collaborate with the CG in terms of expanding the passport services in Lagos State.
“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.
“Lagos is a tourist place, and immigration has a key role to play in the mind of anybody visiting the state.
“So it was a welcome development, and you can see that the state of emergency that was declared is already yielding fruits as the governor accepted CGs request on land allocation to build staff quarters in Lagos,” he said.
Mr Akuneme said that the service was collaborating with the media to change the perception there were no passport booklets for collection.
He said “there are booklets issued that are not collected. It is ironic, we don’t have a problem of booklets, we don’t have a shortage of booklets.”
“What we have had in the last one or two years is a sudden upsurge in the number of Nigerians wanting to travel. We felt it was also related to COVID-19,” he said
Modupe Gbadeyanka