Sadly, Nigerians have been made to pay for this inadequacy in enrolment centres across the country. Either they are been taxed for power and internet or they are been asked to come to with their own sources. This has largely made Nigerians largely ignore it.
According to law, the federal government funds the NIMC project. However, with the current economic situation in the country, the commission appears to be lacking funds.
Aliyu estimates that the commission will need about N132 billion to capture everybody in the country within the next 3 to 5 years. He added that the money will be used to fund the commission’s strategic roadmap and the birth of the ecosystem approach.
The NIMC Ecosystem approach aims to work with other government agencies and players in the private sector that collect data who will in-turn sort the data and send to the NIMC. The commission will then pay such organisations per successful enrolment.
The commission believes that the strategy will help it to reach its goal in 2025. According to the NIMC director-general, the commission had entered strategic partnerships with NAN, National Orientation Agency (NOA) and Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) to sensitise Nigerians on the importance of identity registration.
However, the more important partnership will be with agencies like INEC, Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBBS), and telecom operators who have an extensive database of Nigerians.
To push for widespread registration and enrolment, it is imperative that the NIMC pushes for collaboration. This is quite necessary because Nigerians don’t understand the importance of something until they see it.
In light of this, it is important to note that the NIMC is in collaboration with the NCC to make NIN a prerequisite for sim registration. In other words, during the sim registration process, NIN would be a priority requirement.
Also, the commission has partnered with JAMB to ensure that candidates without NIN are denied registration. This move is sure to drive registration among young people.
Beyond this also, the NIMC needs to embark on more technical partnerships, especially the ones that deal with data sharing with other government and private agencies. INEC, for instance, has a healthy pool of data and information on Nigerians.
The NCC also has access to data obtained from sim card registration and within the time frame NCC has to exploit such data, could arrange for such exchange with the NIMC. Another large pool of data is BVN obtainable from banks.
The downside to all of this is handling and how seriously the commission treats the issue of privacy. There is also the problem of corrupt officials who will see the rush for NIN as opportunities to extort frustrated and unsuspecting Nigerians.
Last year, a statement by NIMC Head of Corporate Communications, Mr Chika Ogbonna hinted that only about one million National e-ID Cards have been printed while over 400,000 have been issued to their owners across the country.
However, with over 30 million people registered, those figures are just too small. Engr. Aliyu explained that while the law says the first issuance of the card should be free, the economic situation makes it impossible for the commission to issue 36 million cards free.
He, however, added that about two million cards are being printed and that the commission was working on a roadmap that will allow it to engage the private sector to produce the cards.