NIMC

Commission appeals to Borno Govt. on National ID enrollment

Iyanda said that the gesture was imperative, going by the challenges facing the enrollment exercise

The National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) on Sunday appealed to the Borno Government to help provide logistics to fast track the ongoing National Electronic Identity Card enrollment in the state.

The NIMC Coordinator in Borno, Mr Shehu Iyanda, made the appeal in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Maiduguri.

Iyanda said that the gesture was imperative, going by the challenges facing the enrollment exercise.

He added that ``the National Electronic Identity Card Enrolment started in 2012 in almost all the 36 states of the federation, but we could not start in Borno due to the Boko Haram insurgency.

"The exercise was inaugurated on Jan. 19 this year after the attainment of relative peace in the state.''

The coordinator pointed out that the enrollment was restricted to only one centre due to logistics problem, stressing that ``unlike in other states, Borno is using only one centre located in Maiduguri.

``Currently, enrollment is done only at Maiduguri NIMC office, pending when things improve.

``We have enrolled between 10,000 and 15,000 persons so far in the state since we started only in January 2016.''

Iyanda said that NIMC was faced with numerous challenges in carrying out the enrollment in the state such as the lack of Internet
connectivity and the lack of power supply.

He noted that ``we are gradually getting over some of the problems but we want the Borno Government to assist us.

``The public power supply to the office is rooted through a 1100 KVA line which cannot provide us regular electricity and this
made us to rely on power generating sets to power our system.

``But we cannot operate the generators without fuel, and to have fuel, we need money to buy the fuel.''

Iyanda noted that although the Borno office had sent proposals to NIMC toward addressing the problems, the state government had a big role to play in ensuring the success of the enrollment.

"In other places like Kano and Yobe, the state governments assisted the NIMC office by providing the needed logistics to ensure the success of the programme.

``We want the Borno Government to emulate them by assisting us with logistics, so that we can continue with the enrollment exercise without much hitches.

``The assistance will go a long way in getting more people enrolled and consequently help in checking the influx of people from other countries and ultimately assist in tackling the security problem in and around the state.

``This is because the ID card has lots of benefits; it will help in  boosting economic activities in the state, as a holder is already part of economic system; one can use it for many things and above all it will help in the anti terrorism war.

``Also, the ID card will help in checking the ghost workers syndrome because it is  linked to the Bank Verification Numbers (BVN) of every Nigerian.''