NIS Sets Up Task Force To Clear 100,000 Unclaimed Passports

Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) has further stepped-up strategic actions to increase the collection of over 100,000 produced but unclaimed passports nationwide.

The NIS said it is embarking on this through the deployment of Assistant Comptroller Generals (ACGs) to some zonal offices with high number of unclaimed passports.

The comptroller-general of Immigration, Isah Jere Idris, while announcing the deployment of the top senior officers, said Lagos topped the list of uncollected passports with about 40,000 produced passports yet to be collected by the applicants.

He said the other zones with higher number of uncollected passports where the ACGs were deployed, were the Benin and Port Harcourt zonal offices of the immigration to ramp up the collection of the produced passports.

CGI Idris added that zonal comptrollers and state comptrollers had also been directed to liaise with passport controllers in their respective areas of responsibility to ensure speedy collection of the produced passports by the applicants.

He also said the mandate of the senior officers was to ensure that everything possible was done to locate the applicants whose passports were among the 100,000 produced passports that have not been collected by the prospective holders.

The immigration boss, while describing as worrisome the failure of applicants to come forward to collect their passports months after they were produced, called on those that applied for the Nigerian travel passports since January last year, and those that applied within the six weeks’ passport processing timeline to visit the Passport Offices where they did their biometric capture for collection of their produced passports.

While assuring that immigration personnel were always working round the clock to ensure speedy processing of application and production of passports to meet the needs of the travelling public, the CGI stated that passport production was a continuous exercise as it was not limited to any particular time or season of the year.