NIMC rallies government to boost NIMS project

… Claims 750, 000 cards ready for collection

The National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) has rallied support of the Federal Government in the completion of the on-going identity management project in the country.

Head, Corporate Communications, NIMC, Loveday Chika Ogbonna, said at the weekend, in Abuja that the Commission is currently making effort to get more support from the government to enable it scale up its service delivery to Nigerians.

Ogbonna said NIMC is very much on course with the project, as enrolment is ongoing in the over 400 centres across the country every weekday from 8:00am to 5:00 pm.

He disclosed that the commission is also issuing the National e-ID Cards to successful enrollees in all the state offices and a few other special centres.

Speaking on the disparities observed in the distribution of cards, especially, among the Very Important Personalities (VIP), Ogbonna explained that the commission paid special attention to selected persons for endorsement purposes.

According to him, every Nigerian and legal resident will eventually get their cards, stressing that the commission is currently making effort to get more support from the government and collaboration from the private sector to enable NIMC scale up its service delivery to Nigerians. “We also call on community leaders, traditional rulers, religious and secular leaders, among others, to help NIMC sensitise their subjects, especially those at the grassroots on the importance of the NIMS project; and the difference between this project and what we used to have which was centred more on card issuance than on identity management.”

Furthermore, he said the commission started enrolling Nigerians and issuing the National Identification Number (NIN) to residents in 2012, at that time the arrangement was a Public Private Partnership where two other actors were to join in the enrolment and subsequent issuing of general multipurpose smart cards to successful enrollees, “but we had a setback with that arrangement.
It was not until August of 2014 that we commenced the pilot phase of the card issuance to Nigerians who had enrolled, we had an official unveiling and presidential launch of the National e-ID Card.

“Since then we have continued to issue cards to Nigerians, I can confirm to you that we have successfully personalised almost all of 2012 National e-ID Cards and are currently rounding up on 2013. 2012 and 2013 cards were particularly slow in reaching their owners because we had to work on some of the data to bring them up to some recent technologies, and we had to do this without asking the enrollees to come back for fresh data capturing.

“As I speak there are over 750,000 cards in our various state offices waiting for collection from those we have sent SMS notifications to. As part of the collaborations and scaling up efforts, we are confident that enrolments from 2014 to date will receive speedy processing”, he stated.

Speaking on the duration of collection, he said the commission was trying to
clear the backlog of cards already in their system and as soon as that is done, card collection should be within a period of three to six months after registration.