Francis Okeke
6 January 2009
The Director General of the National Identity Commission, Mr. Chris Onyemenam has said that about 14 million national identity cards have errors in them.
Onyemenam stated this yesterday in a budget performance and defence session organised for his commission by the House of Representatives' Committee on Interior.
He pointed out that the errors in the data of card carriers was just one of the problems faced by his commission, just as he added that 37.9 million entries were correctly done.
According to him, over two-third of the population are yet to be captured by the National Identity Cards scheme while revealing that as at the time his team took over the Commission, the cards from six states had not been done.
He said that the lack of cards by the six states pointed to the fact that millions of Nigerians are denied access to national identity cards. "Even I, as the Director General of the Commission do not have a copy of my own identity card" he added.
He called for proper planning, which according to him would address the problems faced by the commission..
While admitting that personal information management in the country was still very poor, Onyemenam explained that his commission is embarking on plans to improve the situation by constructing 13 offices in some states at the proposed cost of N22.5 million each so that data centres can be warehoused in those places.
He lamented that "anywhere anyone is registered, if they want to access the data of that person, they have to come to Wuse Zone 5 (Abuja). We want to change that."
He maintained that if direct online personal information was available to Banks, establishments and security agencies, the incidence of fraud and financial scams would be reduced.
The committee, led by Rep. Jerry Manwe (PDP, Taraba) queried the sum of N110 million allocated in the commission's 2009 budget proposal for diesel to power their generators saying the amount was excessive.
Defending the amount, Onyemenam said the huge amount was necessary because the commission's data centres need dedicated power supplies that would provide 24 hours information to those connected to the centres.
He however said that the commission was considering solar energy and smaller capacity generators to cut down energy expenses as a medium term measure adding that the commission budgeted N2.2b last year out of which it returned N549 million.
When the Committee reminded him if he was aware that a former Minister and Permanent secretary went to prison because of the National Identity Card scheme, he said: "I am conscious of the history of the National Identity cards Scheme and I have tried my best to see that the scheme is properly put on track."
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Iam residing in port Harcort how can i get my national id card?