The Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS), Kwara Command, said 3000 international passports were awaiting collection by applicants in its office.
The outgoing Comptroller of Passports in the Command, Alhaji Baba Aliyu, disclosed this to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Ilorin.
Aliyu made the revelation on the sidelines of a retirement party in his honour.
He urged the federal government to initiate sanctions on such individuals, adding that a number of the applicants could not be contacted on phone numbers provided on their applications.
Aliyu said: “We usually send SMS through the contact address and phone numbers provided by the applicants, but some messages failed due to the fact that the numbers are fake.
“Some applicants may have died, while others may refuse to collect it because they could not meet up with what they wanted to use it for.
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“Whatever the reasons may be, passports should not be abandoned, as it serves a lot of functions besides being travelling documents”.
The Comptroller of Passports, however, said that the abandoned passports were not only for people of Kwara, but for applicants from different parts of Nigeria.
He therefore urged applicants to visit the immigration office to collect their passport.
Similarly, he urged Nigerians seeking to acquire international passports to visit the website of the service at immigration.gov.ng to apply.
According to him, it takes just two weeks to acquire a passport as well as renew an expired one.