80% of Nigerians lack proper identification – NIMC

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.”