NIMC’s numerous charges

PERHAPS  no less important than  the theme of this editorial  is the need  to sound a note of warning: it is ominous that Nigerians are besieging the offices of the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) nationwide amidst a Covid-19 resurgence that has been accompanied in recent times by frightening statistics of daily infections and fatalities as never experienced before.  The timing of the directive by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) to telecommunication companies to ensure that they incorporated their subscribers’ National Identity Numbers (NIN) into their data bases was patently inauspicious, even though its intention was noble. It is common knowledge that some Nigerians hardly do what is necessary until it is made compulsory, and especially if failure to comply carries specific and immediate sanctions. And given the emotional attachment many citizens have to their telecommunication devices and internet access, the authorities ought to have envisaged the present deluge of citizens at NIMC offices across the country at these perilous times.  But unfortunately, the country got to a point where NIMC staff had to embark on a two-day warning strike, call it off at the expiration, and issue fresh ultimatums to the government to take their safety seriously.  That was avoidable.

After multiple botched attempts at generating and keeping information about every citizen in a national data base, the government would appear to have made substantial progress in that direction through the present NIMC. Sadly, the organisation risks going the way of its predecessors as it is gradually getting bogged down by sleaze, inefficiency and multiple charges for the services it renders.  And that is not a salutary commentary because the failure of its precursors exacted a great price on the country in terms of monumental national resources lost to patently avoidable waste, corruption and inefficiency.  While the sleaze rearing its ugly head in the organisation today may not be systemic but opportunistic, it is nonetheless abhorrent.  Each time citizens have cause to besiege the NIMC’s offices because they need NIN to meet the requirements for commencing or continuing relationships with some third party institutions, many of them are reportedly fleeced by staffers of the organisation under various guises, even though registration is free.  Without doubt, the citizens are to some extent blameworthy for not approaching the NIMC for their NINs until they came under pressure and became desperate to procure them, but that cannot be a justification for unscrupulous civil servants to swindle them.

And it is no less disturbing too, that nearly everything about NIN requires the payment of fees. Replacement of NIN slip, change of name, address, date of birth,  renewal of e-ID card and so on all attract payments. The fees range from N500 for correction of name or address to N15,000 for date of birth correction. The NIMC has literally become a money-making machine, even though some of the charges cannot stand the scrutiny of logic. For instance, how does one explain the need to pay to renew the e-ID card, which presupposes that one’s citizenship could expire? That is preposterous. Worse still, save for cases of replacement and renewal of documents, the vast majority of cases involving payments for correction of errors were actually payments for blunders committed by staff of the organisation while inputting into their system the information written in long hand by applicants. Thus, the citizens are in a sense being made to bear the brunt of the inefficiency and lack of diligence on the part of the NIMC staff. The truth is that the country has a way of complicating simple things and in the process eroding whatever gain has been recorded.

Apart from replacement of slips for which a token could be charged from the second request just to serve as a deterrent to careless holders, no other services should attract any fee, including the request for change of date of birth which currently attracts the highest fee, perhaps because of the sensitivity around it. As long as NIMC is satisfied that a request for change of date of birth is devoid of fraudulent intent, it should honour it without charging any fee. On the other hand, fraudulent request should be rejected outright in order to discourage unscrupulous persons from getting away with dishonesty and fraud by paying a fee.  NIMC was set up, and is being funded, with taxpayers’ money to deliver social services: it is not a revenue-generating organisation. And indeed, the sensitivity around the national assignment it undertakes cannot permit  revenue generation to be  one of its key performance indices, otherwise the integrity of the data it hosts may be impaired.

Having somewhat turned the corner and almost overcome initial shortcomings, NIMC could actually be a poster organization for the Muhammadu Buhari administration if the government can diligently exercise its  supervisory responsibility over it and ensure that it gets down to brass tacks by focusing  strictly on its raison d’être.

 

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