Makurdi — The National Identity Management Commission, NIMC, has said that over 100 million Nigerians cannot be properly identified as citizens due to non availability of identification database in the country.
This was disclosed, yesterday, by the Director of Information Technology at NIMC, Alhaji Aliya Aziz, at a one-day public forum, in Makurdi, the Benue State capital to sensitise the people of the state on the new national identification number project.
Aziz further said over 75 per cent of the identification cards in circulation in Nigeria were fake as there were no means of authenticating their genuineness.
He said: "Over 100 million of Nigerians have no identification either by phone or any other means; and of those we can be identified, we discovered that 75 per cent of the identification cards in circulation in the country are fake because there are no means of authenticating their genuineness."
He, however, noted that with the new identification project, Nigerians would be properly identified and documented irrespective of age, sex, religion and social status.
In his remark, Director General of NIMC, Mr Chris Oyemenam, said when fully implimented, the newidentification project would co-exist with the old National Identification Card adding: "But after a period of time, we will phase out the former, and even direct banks not to render services to people who do not have the national identification number."
In his speech, the Governor Gabriel Suswam of Benue State, who was represented by his deputy, Chief Steven Lawani, urged the commission to ensure the establishment of tamper proof database for the country.
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Lack of logistics infrastructure and facilities in Nigeria could be or be identify as the major root cause of insecurity in most part of the country,inability to account for it's citizen exposes the internal security to danger and therefore would remain a shadow chase of militant and terrorist.To adequately address the insecurity nationwide ,the government should be able to account for or identify its citizen through simple issuance of identity card with mandatory registration at the nearest police station ,failing to register with local police station should carry a punitive measure .Police station in local communities should be able to identify new settler and enforce mandatory registration,in applying the simple measure crime and other menial criminal activities will be checkmate,overall result will be positive .This simple ,less costly form if introduced will surely produce some sort of positive result.
Until there is a central identification database in this country, we could register all the simm cards we want and still fail in security and direct social services. It's like a father with so many children who can't even identify them - and is expected to know when to pay their fees in school. No budget in this country would ever be realistic as they would always be based on assumed numbers. The earlier wake and work, identify Nigerians from birth, the better this country would become. People blowing us to pieces claim to be Nigerians. How can we prove they are or they are not? We don't even know if most of our politicians are even Nigerians.