Ado-Ekiti — A total of 60,000 centres nationwide have been designated for the National Identity Card registration exercise, scheduled to begin on February 18.

Minister of State for Internal Affairs, Elder Odion Ugbesia, told newsmen in Ibadan yesterday, that the centres would register the targeted 60 million Nigerians aged between 18 years and above during the two weeks registration period.

"The centres are spread across 774 Local Governments, 36 states' capitals and Abuja and will be manned by 246,000 ad hoc workers engaged for the exercise and other permanent staff of the Department of National Civic Registration (DNCR)," he said.

He said the Federal Government had already installed all the necessary facilities needed for the smooth take-off of the programme.

The minister said the government had made contingency plans to forestall the registration of non-Nigerians.

"We have effective immigration control to check the activities of some foreigners who may want to illegally register for the ID card," Ugbesia said.

According to him: "a lot of screening will be done to determine people who are eligible to obtain the ID cards and to eliminate non-Nigerians from the exercise".

He assured Nigerians that the exercise would be "error proof and fraud-free", pointing out that the DNCR had also taken measures to safeguard against fraudulent practices in the registration and issuance of the cards.

Ugbesia said the equipment that would be used for the scheme was capable of detecting cases of double registration.

According to him, it could send information and image on every Nigerian from the various centres to the central computer centre in Abuja for the processing of the identity cards.

He, therefore, advised Nigerians to take full advantage of the scheme, to enhance their nationality and for the overall socio-economic development of the country.

Reports have it that about N1.5 billion would be spent during the exercise. The money would be used to pay the allowances of the 246,000 ad hoc workers and the settlement of other bills.

Last month, the Federal Government released N10 billion for the take-off of the project.

The contract for the ID card project was awarded in July, 2001 to SAGEM of France for 215.9 million dollars for the off-shore component and N2.089 billion for on-shore component.