The Director-General of the National Identity Management Commission, NIMC, Mr Aliyu Aziz has said that the commission has so far registered 42 million Nigerians on the national Identity database.
The director-general was speaking during an interactive session with members of the media to commemorate the 2020 National Identity Day on Wednesday in Abuja.
The theme of the 2020 celebration was ” Identity for Health, Sustainable Development and Growth”.
Aziz said the commission required additional four thousand (4,000) enrollment centres to effectively speed up the enrollment process, adding that the commission currently had one thousand (1,000) enrollment centres which according to him was not enough to cover the population of the country.
He also informed the gathering that the idea behind the introduction of digital Identity Ecosystem was to enable government have easy access to accurate data of citizens for the provision of social services.
He said, through the system, the commission was working on modalities to capture 2.8 million Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) within two to three months.
The director-general however said, the commission was able collate 14 million data from other government agencies through its data harmonisation process.
Aziz also charged members of the public to report any act of extortion by members of staff of the commission especially during enrollment process.
He therefore used the opportunity to encourage Nigerians to come out enmass to enroll and obtain their national identity number (NIN).
” Our major focus now is the NIN because the card is for convenience” he said.
” With your full cooperation, participation and consistent support, we can bequeath a robust and sustainable system of national identity to our dear nation and future generations.
”If you are yet to enroll and obtain your National Identification Number (NIN), I urge you to do so as soon as possible”he said