On Monday, the Kwara Command of the Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS) said that 3000 foreign passports were available for pick-up by applicants at the office.
This was revealed to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Ilorin on the eve of Alhaji Baba Aliyu’s retirement celebration. He is the departing Comptroller of Passports for the Command.
The Federal Government should impose sanctions on these people, Aliyu argued, noting that some of the applicants’ listed phone numbers were unreachable.
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“We typically send SMS using the applicants’ stated phone numbers and contact information, but occasionally messages have been rejected because the numbers are bogus.
Some applicants might not have been alive to get it, while others would decline because they couldn’t use it for what they had intended.
“Whatever the reasons may be, passports should not be abandoned, as it serves a lot of functions other than being travel documents,” he stated.
However, according to the Comptroller of Passports, applicants from other parts of Nigeria were also eligible for the abandoned passports, not just residents of Kwara State.
In order to pick up their passports, Aliyu advised applicants to go to the immigration office.
In addition, he advised Nigerians who wanted to apply for passports for travel abroad to go to immigration.gov.ng, the Service’s website.
He said both getting a new passport and renewing an old one only takes two weeks.
