RECENTLY the legendary national identity card scheme made headlines in our news media. The Director General of the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), Mr. Chris Onyemenam, said that the registeration of Nigerians for a new national identity card would begin after the on-going national general elections in the country.This new attempt is born in the context of failed efforts in the past. It would be recalled that in the late 1970s, the Department of National Civil Registration (DNCR) with the responsibility to provide National Identify Card (NIC) for Nigerians was put in place and there was a re-launch in 2003 under a contract awarded to Sagem, a French company. However, the entire process has been dogged by failed contracts and poor implementation and above all, scandalous bribery, which in sum has turned the latently laudable project into an open drain of scarce national resources.Beyond the scandal of the 2003 exercise, there were other problems such as non-availability of National Identity Card for registrants and the absence of unique identification numbers, the registration of a large number of non-Nigerians, double registration, wrong documentation, underage applications and where the cards were available, they were not machine readable. On top of these, is the inherent politics of perceiving the process of the NIC as a basis for accessing national resources.Originally, the NIC was meant to check the influx of illegal aliens into the country as well as validate other civil documents such as travelling passports among others, beyond the inadequate census demographics. That was in the past. Today, a national identity card is required for sundry transactions, namely, the registration for voting, payment of taxes, credit transactions, access to health insurance, access to pension and social security, purchase of land and for the issuance of passports and the opening of bank accounts.In the main, the contradictions in the national identity card project provided the justification for the establishment of NIMC by means of Act 23 of 2007. The Act provides for the introduction of a chip based technology otherwise known as General Multi-Purpose Card (GMPC), integrate a unique process of registration and enrolment of demographic and biometric data of registrable persons as basis for the establishment of a national identity database, harmonisation and integration of the existing identification databases in government agencies and issuance of unique personal identification numbers. It has among its mandate, the provision of unique set of principles, practices, policies, processes and procedures and to put in place an identity management system infrastructure that can make verification practice possible.For sure, the need for the identity card is indubitable, we are however pessimistic about its success and hope that the new initiative will not reinforce the cesspool of corruption which has characterised previous implementations. Already, the NIMC has indicated some challenges facing the new scheme such as multiple identification initiatives by extant institutions such as the Pension Commission, land registry, Federal Inland Revenue Service, SIM card registration, law enforcement agencies, Financial Institutions, the Independent National Electoral Commission, Immigrations, and Federal Road Safety Corps with separate registration processes.This may not be a problem as an adequate national identity card project ought to be integrative and reduce these sundry bureaucracies in the civil sector. Therefore, we suggest that the NIMC should use existing data bases from these other sources. This will have immediate advantagesit will cut cost and eliminate the duplication of efforts.Again, we dare say that in the absence of a well-articulated identity philosophy, the method of registration is not only faulty but made to look like a war for the national cake. There are many statutory offices to handle the national identity card project. Existing public institutions such as those mentioned above and including schools, hospitals and public institutions should be used as registration centres. And more importantly, the contractor in charge of this current projectthe Pakistan-based National Database Registration Authority (NADRA) is moving rather slowly. The contract for this exercise was awarded since 2009 and the project should move beyond media hype. We sincerely hope the jinx can be broken this time by NIMC through NADRA, which is rated among the top 50 ID management companies in the world.
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