TheCable

Milka Musa, controller of the Lagos passport command of the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS), says 13,800 passports are yet to be collected at the agency’s offices in Lagos.

The development comes days after the Ikoyi office of the NIS said it extended its workdays to include Saturdays and Sundays — following a directive by Idris Jere, acting comptroller-general of the NIS, to clear the backlog of passport applications.

Speaking with NAN on Monday, Musa said 12,300 passports haven’t been collected at the Ikoyi passport office, while 1,500 are at the Festac office.

The controller also said there are uncollected passports at the Ikeja office of the NIS.

Musa appealed to applicants who had applied before September 2021 to check their respective offices of application for collection, adding that text messages have been sent to the applicants.

“Based on the volume of the uncollected passports, I believe the applicants had forgotten they applied for a passport. This may be the category of applicants who were in a haste when they came to apply,” she said.

“The Nigeria Immigration Service ( NIS) is appealing to these applicants to come and collect their passports.

“There are series of security checks that must be conducted on each applicant before the passport could be issued. Nigerians should stop being in a haste when they come to apply for passports, because the series of operations and security checks involved before issuance cannot be carried out in seconds.

“The NIS, under the watch of the new acting comptroller-general of NIS, Mr Idris Jere, would not relent in its efforts at providing super services to Nigerians.”

She also said the scarcity of passport booklets witnessed months ago was caused by the COVID pandemic, adding that “when the lockdown was eased, what the NIS witnessed was a geometric growth in passport applications”.