NIMC sets deadline to capture 70m Nigerians – DG

The Director-General, National Identity Management Commission, Aliyu Aziz, says the commission is prepared to accomplish President Muhammadu Buhari’s target of capturing 70 million Nigerians in its database by December 2019.
Aziz stated this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria shortly after the fourth ID4Africa Conference ended in Abuja.
President Buhari, represented by the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Mustapha Boss, had at the opening of the summit, said the Federal Government’s target was to grow the database to 50 million by December 2018 and subsequently 70 million by December 2019.
NAN reports that NIMC has, so far, issued National Identity Number to 30 million Nigerians.
Aziz said the commission is collaborating with its partners in public and private sectors to meet the target.
He said: “We are working towards that by having all our partners; that is our partners in the public and private sectors to capture data.
“So, wherever a citizen has interface with the government, they will be able to capture the data and send to us.
“With that, we should be able to take up that 70 million and even beyond.”
He said in the summit, Nigeria has been able to showcase that it has doubled the number of enrollment from 2017 till date based on enrollment and harmonisation.
According to him, the commission is able to show that it is going to use an ecosystem approach to grow its database and that has also coincided with the topic for the next year which we are going to showcase.
Aziz said: “Also, we are able to get our donor partners to confirm to us that funding of the progamme and we believe that this is one of the major constraints.
“All our partners, the harmonisation committee partners made up of 26 agencies, were all around and we all reached agreement. So we look forward to a successful ecosystem.”
On the gains of the summit, the director-general said the just-concluded conference had showcased the NIMC.
He said: “It has shown that NIMC is capable of doing things excellently and that all our state coordinators were here and they were able to understand what has been happening in other African countries and beyond.
“I think it is a morale booster for us all.”
NAN reports that 47 African countries participated in the summit while 90 countries around the world attended the event.