Mr Chris Onyemenam, Director-General, National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), said yesterday in Abuja that the identity management system would be launched soon.

Onyemenam said at the forum of the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) that the commission was currently scaling up its activities as it had established enrolment centres in all 36 states of the federation.

He did not give a specific date for the launch but said that the commission was in the process of getting approval from higher authorities for a specific date which would be in the "next couple of weeks."

He said that there were ongoing enrolments on a pilot scale in Abuja and Lagos and other states would follow suit so as to ensure every hitch was addressed and enrolment scaled up before the launch.

"As we speak, we have just about 100,000 people who have been enrolled but by the end of next week, the plan is to scale up daily operations to somewhere like 20,000 enrolments a day.

"We would continue to scale up: a minimum of 100,000 a day and about one million a day is what we are looking at and manage it at that level."

Onyemenam said the focus of the commission is now on "identity card management" and not "identify card issuance."

He also disclosed that the commission was working out plans to enroll Nigerians living abroad in its new identity management project.

NAN