NIMC prints 1m National e-ID cards

The National Identity Management Commission on Saturday said it had printed about one million National e-ID Cards and issued over 400,000 to their owners across the country.

The commission disclosed this in a statement issued by its Head, Corporate Communications, Mr Chika Ogbonna, in reaction to complaints by Nigerians that the process of obtaining the card was slow and discouraging.

The statement quoted the Director-General/CEO of the Commission, Mr Aliyu Aziz, as saying that the commission had enrolled over 11 million unique data into the National Identity Database.

He said, “This is in line with the NIMC Act 2007 which establishes the Commission and clearly defines its role and responsibility to Nigerians.

“So far, we have enrolled over 11 million unique data into the National Identity Database.

“We have also printed about one million National e-ID Cards, and have issued over 400,000 of these cards to the owners.

“Most of the unissued cards are lying in the NIMC State Offices, the owners are yet to come and collect them,” the statement quoted Aziz as saying.

According to the statement, there are plans to outsource the personalising and printing of the National e-ID card to private printing bureaus.

This, it said, would ensure that individuals who enrolled for the NIN, would get the National e-ID Card immediately or within a maximum period of seven days.

It said that the steps would help the commission to clear the backlog of the unprinted cards and issue them to their owners.

The statement said that the commission was facing funding challenges which seemed to be slowing down its planned activities and timeliness.

The statement urged qualified Nigerians to go to the closest NIMC enrolment centre to register.

It said that the commission was working to harmonise the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System with the Bank Verification Number records for easy registration and procurement of NIN.

“The Nigerian Communications Commission has also agreed to release data from the on-going Subscriber Identification Module cards registration exercise to the commission.

“These are in line with the Federal Government’s directive to sister agencies collecting bio-metric to harmonise and integrate with the NIMC being the central repository of bio-metric data in Nigeria.

“By 2019, it is projected that NIMC should have over one hundred million unique records at the central database.

“At that time, we will have commenced the enforcement of the mandatory use of the NIN for all services and transactions requiring the authentication and verification to confirm individual’s identity.

“At that time also, whoever that has not enrolled (and is not a child) will be required to pay a token in order to get enrolled for the NIN.

“So, it is advisable for everyone to get enrolled and get the NIN before that time comes,” the statement added.