The Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) has said no fewer than 7,500 passports are yet to be collected in Oyo State.
Oyo NIS noted that some of these passports have been produced since 2020 but their owners failed to pick them up.
Speaking in Ibadan during a working visit to the Oyo State Command of NIS, the Assistant Comptroller-General of Immigration in charge of Planning and Statistics, Dora Amahian, noted that NIS has sent text messages to the applicants notifying them of the collection of their passports but only a few of them responded to it.
She lamented that some applicants submitted the wrong phone numbers, which makes SMSs sent to them remain undelivered.
“We have about 7,500 uncollected passports in Oyo State and we do not want them to expire in our hands because if they do, applicants will have to pay money for fresh applications.
“In times past, there had been unpalatable comments about how applicants were made to wait endlessly for passport issuance.
“We want to tell you that NIS has been issuing passports but people don’t come to pick them up,’’ she said
Amahian appealed to those who had applied for passports in the last six to nine months in Oyo State to pick up their passports, assuring Nigerians that passports would be issued to fresh applicants within six weeks, while renewals would be done in three weeks.
