The Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS) on Tuesday said about 140,000 international passports are uncollected nationwide.
The service spokesman, Tony Akuneme, said this when he visited the Alausa Passport Office in Ikeja, Lagos State.
40,000 of the uncollected passports are in the Alausa Passport Office, he added.
The majority of the uncollected passports had wrong phone contacts and untraceable addresses.
Akuneme implored applicants to process their international passports by themselves without involving racketeers.
He also dismissed reports that getting a new passport or renewing an existing one was difficult.
“In spite of the extensive awareness embarked on by NIS on passport application and its processes, some Nigerians still patronize racketeers or consultants to process their passports, which usually does not work out well,” he complained.
”Some applicants are gullible, they fell into the hands of touts who duped them of their hard-earned money.”
He pleaded with Nigerians to visit https://passport.immigration.gov.ng/application, to process their passports themselves.
“I still want to emphatically plead with passport seekers not to use consultants, racketeers, or masqueraders while processing their international passports.
“Most of the contact numbers inputted by these unethical human beings are not real,” he said.
He implored applicants who applied before July 2022 and have been unable to obtain their passports to visit the NIS website to lodge complaints.
