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General-Purpose Card To Be Rolled Out Soon – NIMC Reassures Nigerians
The much-anticipated general-purpose card by the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) will soon be rolled out.
NIMC’s Deputy Director/Head, Strategy and Programme Office, Dr Alvan Ikoku, disclosed this in Abuja at a workshop on Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI), and Digital Public Goods, (DPGs), organized by Media Foundation for West Africa, (MFWA), with funding support from Co Develop, for 20 Nigerian journalists selected for its DPI Media Fellowship.
In the lecture entitled “Nigeria’s Identity Management System: The Journey so far, challenges and prospects”, Dr Ikoku said the delay in rolling it out the card was to ensure that all necessary measures are put in place for a successful roll.
“I assure you that the roll out will happen as soon as possible. However, the government-to-people variation of the card will roll out in weeks. It will be driven by the ministries of Agriculture and Humanitarian Affairs. That will happen sooner than you can imagine”.
According to him, a well-developed digital identification program being put in place by the Federal Government would ultimately help to deliver its development agenda and provide key government services such as safety net, financial inclusion, security, and agriculture to the citizens.
He maintained that digital identification is at the heart of President Bola Tinubu’s administration’s priorities. “There are eight of those presidential priorities. But, not one of them would be quite as successful without a digital identification platform.
According to him, NIMC is running a policy of inclusivity which compels it to capture every Nigerian and legal resident into the National Identity Database.
“We have issued approximately 115 million NINs to date – 84.2% are adult, 15.8 are child – age zero to 15 years. But, without the ecosystem approach, without the tenacity of purpose, we would have just been taking a lifetime, to get this number.
“Before now, without a supporting document, you could not proceed to the end of the registration process. But that has been overtaken by time. Our policy choice today is on inclusivity and we hope that every Nigerian and legal resident will eventually get captured, bearing in mind that they may not have supporting documents for no fault of theirs”.
In a welcome address, Paul Gozo of the Media Foundation for West Africa, urged the fellows to give their best to the project which is targeted at building their understanding and capacity to report the DPI with a view to increasing knowledge and adoption across the continent.
“It’s just like the way we have flyovers, the rail lines and all that. But, digitally, how do we build infrastructure so that other essential services can also be extended to the less privileged? This is the goal of the fellowship and this workshop.
“You have experience in health reporting, politics, etc. DPI encompasses all of them. So, you can look at DPI issues from the health perspective or political perspective. At the end of the day, we want to see how we can understand what DPI is and how we can carry it forward”.
Reporting by Alfred Ajayi
