The Nigeria Immigration Service says about 97,000 passport booklets issued remained uncollected in the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory. This, it said, was due to third party applications and instances where some people dropped wrong contact information during their application.
The NIS Public Relations Officer, Mr Tony Akuneme, a Comptroller of Immigration, said these in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria in Abuja on Friday.
Akuneme said the service recently found out that Lagos State had half of the uncollected passports, adding 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 added, “Some of them (applicants) engaged agents to help them in their passport processing and these agents might be doing it for a lot of people. They end up dropping wrong contacts, thereby making it difficult to reach out to the owners of these passports when they are ready for collection. This is a big challenge.”
The acting Comptroller General, NIS, Mrs Caroline Adepoju, recently declared a state of emergency on passport issues across the country.
She further reiterated that imported noodles are prohibited in Nigeria, and the agency sampled three major markets in the country to ascertain that imported noodles are not sold in Nigeria.
