October 17, 2012 by Dayo Oketola
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.”
SOURCE: The Punch - Nigeria's Most Widely Read Newspaper 17 October 2012.
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