National ID: We’ve registered 18.5 million Nigerians —NIMC DG

The Director-General of the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), Dr  Aliyu Aziz, has said that the commission has registered 18.5 million Nigerians across 809 national ndentity number enrollment centres across the country.

Aziz stated this during a media interactions in Lagos, recently.

He also explained that the commission is working to complete the hamonisation of various disparate data in the country by 2020 in line with the directive by President Muhammadu Buhari.

Aziz explained that already, the commission had started work on hamonisation of data in the country, noting that the process would be faster if all the agencies involved can operate as an ecosystem.

“The hamonisation is being driven by the Acting Vice President, Professor Yemi Osibanjo. We are hoping this will happen and be completed in another three years,” he said.

He noted that data expected to be hamonised include the Subscriber Identification Module  (SIM) card registration being handled by the Nigerian Communication Commission (NCC); Bank Verification Number (BVN); Drivers License from the Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC); voters card number from the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) among others.

Aziz, who disclosed that NIMC actually embarked on an enrollment strategy in 2012, which has grown exponentially since 2015, said as at 2016, the commission had registered 14 million Nigerians for the National Identity Number (NIN) and the electronic Identification card (eID).

“The figure grew to 18.5 million currently, but we hoped to have registered about 28 million by the end of the year,” he said.

NIMC, he said, was established enrollment centres in 809 locations (556 LGAs, 36 states and 215 Special Centres) across the nation, adding that 1.2 million national eID cards produced and have been issued.

Reeling out the benefits of the NINs, which are issued to each Nigerians and other of security embedded in the cards, Aziz said authentication and verification service are deployed by banks, Nigeria Police Force, Department of State Security Service, private sector and other government agencies.

He encouraged Nigerians to ensure they enroll and register at any of the designated 809 enrolments centres, disclosing that any Nigerian without the National Identification Number (NIN) issued by the commission runs the risk of being regarded as a non-Nigerian citizen. He stressed that the NIN is more important than the eID card.