Sources revealed that the activities of the agency to deliver an electronic or e-identity card have been stalled by paucity of funds.
Meanwhile, NIMC has reaffirmed its commitment to carrying out its statutory responsibility to Nigeria and to Nigerians in spite of prevailing cash crunch in the country.
Its Director-General/Chief Executive officer, Aliyu Aziz, who spoke at the weekend, said the commitment was in line with the NIMC Act 2007 which established the Commission and clearly defined its role and responsibility to Nigerians. ‘’So far, we have enrolled over eleven million unique data into the National Identity Database (NIDB).
He said: “We have also printed about a million National e-ID Cards, and have issued over four hundred thousand of these Cards to their owners. Most of the unissued cards are lying in the NIMC State Offices, the owners are yet to come and collect them.”
He said there are plans to outsource the personalising and printing of the National e-ID Card to private printing bureaus, so that the backlog of the unprinted cards could be cleared and issued to their owners before long. “Outsourcing of the card printing to other printing bureaus in Nigeria will also ensure that once you enroll for the NIN, you will get the National e-ID Card immediately or within a maximum period of seven days,” the CEO said.
Aliyu said though the Commission is facing funding challenges which has been slowing its activities and timelines, this was not peculiar to the Commission as the country is undergoing economic restructuring.
Hit by scarcity of funds, allocations are not available to ministries departments and agencies (MDAs), including NIMC. This is a temporary interruption that will soon be over, as government is geared towards reinvigorating the funding mechanism for the Commission, he added.
He said the funding challenge has not deterred NIMC from carrying out its obligations as it has continued to provide service at its over 400 Enrolment Centres across the country, and the number of citizens who have obtained their National Identity Number (NIN) has continued to increase, even as more Nigerians have been urged to go to the closest NIMC enrolment centres to register.
NIMC has also refocused its efforts on the harmonisation of data with other agencies, as it has become imperative to ensure we ramp up the records in the National Identity Database to deliver better service to the nation.
