80%
of Nigerians lack proper identification – NIMC
The National Identity
Management Commission has said that 80 per cent of Nigerians have no proper
identification due to the lack of a comprehensive national identity database,
the lacuna the NIMC was established to address.
The Director,
Information Technology/Database, NIMC, Mr. Aliyu Azeez, while speaking at a
stakeholders’ forum organised by the commission in Lagos on Tuesday, said only
20 per cent of the country’s population had some form of identification.
He said over 100 million
Nigerians lacked any form of identification that could allow them engage in
seamless transactions locally and internationally.
Azeez, who noted that
the identity management sector was critical to Nigeria’s development, said,
“One hundred million Nigerians do not have any form of identification. Less
than 20 per cent of Nigeria’s population have some form of identification.
There are lots of activities happening in terms of the development of identity
databases, but they are done in silos.
“I call them sectoral
silos because there is no common key that allows these disparate databases to
talk to each other.”
To ensure the
registration of citizens and legal residents as provided by the NIMC Act, the
commission’s Director-General, Mr. Chris Onyemenam, had earlier said the
issuance of National Identification Numbers and cards would begin by the first
quarter of 2013.
He said the pilot scheme
was being successfully implemented in Bauchi, Bayelsa, Enugu, Kaduna and Lagos
states, as well as the Federal Capital Territory, adding that national identity
numbers were currently being issued in the pilot scheme states.
Onyemenam, however, said
the commission was ready to expand its coverage to the 36 states of the
federation, adding that enrolment offices would be set up in all the states by
the end of the month.
He said, “By the end of
October, we would have concluded testing of these systems from these various
locations. We will wait for sometime to look at the volume management and
connectivity. We want to see how we can manage the switch from one network to
another.”
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