Jonathan launches national e-ID card
(Nigeria )
President Goodluck Jonathan has directed all Federal Government’s ministries,
agencies and departments to unify their biometric data capture operations with
the National Electronic Identity Card (e-ID Card) scheme.
Jonathan gave the directive while launching the issuance
process of the e-ID card at the Banquet Hall of the Presidential Villa, Abuja .
He also directed the National Identity Management Commission,
NIMC, to issue the card to all federal public servants and pensioners for
``speedy and safe payment of salaries and pensions.”
Toward this, he urged the commission to collaborate with the
Integrated Personnel and Payroll System, IPPS and Pension Department.
He added that the Bureau of Public Procurement, BPP, should
also ensure immediate compliance with the directive.
“The regime of duplication of biometric data bases must now
have to give way to harmonisation and unification with the e-ID scheme, which
shall be the primary data base. The Secretary to the Government of the
Federation, the Attorney General and Minister of Justice, and the Governor of
the CBN should immediately key in.
“They should, in conjunction with NIMC, reach modalities for
the harmonisation of their biometric projects, including other ongoing projects
in other MDAs, with the e-ID card scheme,” Jonathan said.
According to him, proliferation and duplication of efforts
is neither cost effective, nor security-smart.
He stressed that it was important to remove obstacles that
may impede the NIMC from the discharge of its constitutional functions and
statutory obligations.
Describing the launch of the card as an important milestone,
the president expressed happiness that his administration’s vision of a
reliable national identity database was coming to reality.
He decried the absence of a national identification system
which, according to him, made it difficult for targets of government’s subsidy
programmes and other social security services to be reached.
``I'm particularly pleased about NIMC because a number of
things we are supposed to do well as a nation, we are not doing well. And
sometimes we blame government but because of the failure of the system and the
credibility of the process.
``If you take the issue of subsidy of transport for example,
what we do is subsidise hydrocarbon but it does not get to the ordinary people.
Government spends hundreds of billions of naira every year in the budget.
Sometimes, it is controversial; we subsidise the price of kerosene and PMS, yet
it is selling very high in the market,” he said.
“We are thinking about how to subsidise the transportation
of the person going to school, the person going to the market and the person
moving from Lagos to Enugu
or Lagos to Kano .
``What happens is that 60 per cent of these subsidies is
smuggled out of the country and those who make the money will come and use it
to induce the suffering masses even to riot against government,’’ he added.
Jonathan expressed happiness that the national electronic
identity management system would go a long way in addressing this
challenge.
``I'm quite pleased today that with the NIMC’s success story,
we are moving forward as a nation. Everybody talks about change, and I always
say that it is not possible to just wake up and change. A change is a vector
quantity; you must have the magnitude and the direction.
``I have taken keen interest in this project, primarily
because of the pervasive impact it can have on every facet of the
socio-economic fabric of our dear nation. This is in sync with the
transformation agenda of my government,’’ he said.
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