Applicants Groans over Delay in Collection of International Passports at Ogun State NIS Command
The Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS) has been battling over shortage of Nigeria international passport booklets for over 10 months. This is what has kept the agency on toes since last year.
Applicants at several passport issuing centers have been going through lots of hardship before collecting their passports booklets after application.
Information made available indicates Ogun State applicants were being forced to wait between 3 and 5 months before collection. This is also said to be happening in some of the other centers.
The press release which was addressed by the NIS spoke person, Mr. Sunday James denied any shortfall of passport booklets stating “there was no scarcity of passports booklets across all NIS Issuing Centers in the country and Missions abroad as being reported by a section of the media.”
Though, Mr James acknowledged that NIS had the challenge of shortage of the booklets, but insisted that “the problem had since been resolved.”
The NIS spokeman also added in the press release that “the Comptroller-General of the NIS, Mr Muhammad Babandede, had urged all Passport applicants to approach the nearest Passport Offices to process their Passports.
“The Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) has assured Nigerians of the availability of passport booklets at all its passport issuing centres in the country.”
Findings however revealed the situation is yet to change in Ogun State command of the NIS since April 2017.
“In fact is even getting worse.” An angry applicant informed our reporter.
Newsheadline247 understands there are over 1000 applicants still waiting for their passport booklets in Ogun State NIS command.
Unlike other issuing centers where there is no longer impediment in applying and issuance of passport booklets, applicants are still waiting for months for collection at the Ogun State NIS command in Abeokuta.
Further digs by our reporter also reveal that some applicants had to pay extra fee to get their passport booklet on time.
But it was also gathered that the Passport center officer is making frantic efforts to salvage the situation.
A source informed that “the PC has been unlucky in finding solution to the growing multiple of applicants waiting for their passports in the past 6 months.”
It was also gathered that only the 64 pages booklets were made available to the Abeokuta issuing center whereas majority of the applicants applied for the 32 pages hence, the growing numbers of frustrated waiting applicants.
