Bisola David
The names of 8,611 Nigerians who have failed to pick up their issued passports from Nigeria Immigration offices across the country have been made public by the federal government.
Their identities were made public on the Federal Government’s website by the Ministry of Interior, with a link published on its official Twitter account.
The minister, Rauf Aregbesola, also tweeted this on Thursday morning.
According to the Nigerian Immigration Service, almost 148,000 passports have been waiting to be picked up countrywide since 2020.
The NIS’s director of public relations, Anthony Akuneme, also pointed out that the NIS had trouble getting in touch with the owners since some had provided false information about how to contact them while registering.
He disclosed that the owners of the abandoned passports had been located thanks to a team of top officers sent out nationwide by the Comptroller-General, Isa Idris.
He added that passports whose owners could not be located at the conclusion of the exercise wouldn’t be destroyed because they remained federal government property.
In the meantime, the ministry urged Nigerians whose identities were disclosed in the link from the tweet to go to the passport office to pick up theirs.
The list included information like the passport number, first name, alternate name, last name, and the date of manufacture.
Below is the to the list link:
https://immigration.gov.ng/uncollected-passports/
