NIMC targets registration of 28m Nigerians by end of 2017
NIMC targets registration of 28m
Nigerians by end of 2017
The Director General of NIMC, Mr Aliyu Aziz, made this known
at a media briefing on Saturday in Lagos. Aziz said that anyone without the NIN
issued by the commission ran the risk of being regarded as a non-citizen.
The National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) says it
has a target to register 28 million Nigerians into the National Identification
Number (NIN) system by the end of 2017.
The Director General of NIMC, Mr Aliyu Aziz, made this known
at a media briefing on Saturday in Lagos. Aziz said that anyone without the NIN
issued by the commission ran the risk of being regarded as a non-citizen.
“The commission embarked on an enrolment strategy in 2012
which has grown exponentially since 2015. “Now we have reached 18.5 million and
the focus which is our goal is that by 2017 ending, the commission would have
reached 28 million people.
“The main aim of the registration is to have a single
identification,” he said.
He listed the many benefits of the NIN to include one person
one identity, enhanced participation in the political process and its value as
an important tool to fight corruption and terrorism.
Aziz said the NIN would enable citizens to exercise their
rights and facilitate management of subsidies and safety net payments as
applicable to internally displaced persons.
He said that to achieve this, the commission needed to
tackle some of the challenges it was facing, such as data captured being very
poor and absence of a central ID repository.
Others, he said, were up-scaling deficiency, legal framework
peculiarity and the challenge of political will. He also bemoaned the poor
funding of the commission which he said had hampered execution of its mandate
and targets.
According to him, poor funding and inadequate staff remuneration
had led to constant loss of strategic human resources.
Aziz, however, said that the commission had also made some
achievements which included increasing the National Identity Database which
currently boasts of about 18.5 million records.
He said that 809 NIN enrolment centres had also been created
nationwide just as it had launched the new electronic National ID cards with
multiple functions and achievement of Global Vendor Certificate Programme
(GVCP) Certification.
Aziz said that the next step for the commission would be the
achievement of the presidential directive on harmonisation and consolidation of
biometric data into the national identity database.
He said that the commission would soon commence the
enforcement of the mandatory use of NIN and issue directives to banks to accept
NIN as a valid means of identification.