26th May, 2016
The National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) has produced over one million national identity cards, out of which it has issued 300,000, the Director-General of the commission, Mr Aliyu Aziz, has said.
Aziz, who made the disclosure in an interview in Abuja on Thursday, said over 750,000 had yet to be collected.
He said in spite of the commission’s constraints, including limited funding and production capacity, it had made remarkable progress in its assignment.
According to him, the commission is exploring avenues to expand its capacity to be able to deliver faster and more efficiently.
“You may recall that we started card production and issuance in 2014 through a mini card personalisation bureau set up as part of intervention to meet the identity needs of the public.
“Unfortunately, the Private Public Partnership (PPP) effort was not very successful.
“The commission is, therefore, making efforts to get more support from government to scale up its service delivery to Nigerians.
“Currently, our facilities can register 300 million citizens,’’ he said.
The NIMC boss urged Nigerians to utilise the opportunity and register for their identification cards.
He said that the Federal Government deemed it necessary to centralise the process of ascertaining the identity of every Nigerian within a national frame work.
He also implored them to keep their National Identity Number (NIN) slips safe as they would their Automated Teller Machine (ATM) and cheque books, emphasising that the NIN slip was a security document.
Aziz gave an assurance that even if the NIN slip was misplaced, the card could still be collected.
“The individual can walk into any of our offices and get verified by using his or her finger-print which will display all the information he or she supplied at the point of registration as well as the NIN.
“The individual can also provide the phone number or complete date of birth provided at the point of registration to enable the NIMC officer to access the required identity information and ascertain the status of the card.
“If the card is ready, the individual can then go through the usual card collection process.
“Please note that people who carelessly and constantly lose their NIN slip may be charged a token for replacement,’’ he said.
Aziz said that NIMC was working to establish a short code for NIN retrieval.