The Ikoyi office of the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) has announced that it will commence working 7 days a week to clear the backlog of passports and meet the demands of applicants.
The passport control officer (PCO) in Ikoyi, Ibrahim Liman disclosed the initiative on Sunday in an interview with the New Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos.
He gave the statement while reacting to complaints regarding passport racketeering and uncleared passport backlog.
Liman said that the passport office has issued no less 15,000 passports since he assumed office in June 2021.
He added that the service has been working to meet the demands of applicants and warned those involved in passport racketeering to desist from the act or face severe sanctions as the service will fish out and sanction offenders.
Liman disclosed that some challenges might delay the release of the passports to applicants. Such delays may be due to discrete scrutiny of applications to ascertain applicants’ eligibility.
The passport boss emphasised that the NIS would not hesitate to discipline anyone found to be involved in defrauding applicants or any illegality capable of damaging the image of the service.
According to him, “The service has recently introduced additional sophisticated measures toward checking attitudes inimical to the conduct of its official duties, especially issues to do with corruption..”
Ibrahim Liman appealed to applicants to always channel their enquiries to the NIS Service department in all passport offices.
In his words, “NIS has reiterated that all qualified prospective seekers of travel documents should apply online.
“I especially appeal to prospective applicants to visit immigration.gov.ng which serves as the service website to apply and make payment for their passports.”
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