National ID Card Will Complement PVC’s – Buhari

3 Min Read
President Muhammadu Buhari being assisted by the Director – general –CEO of National Identity Management Commission , Mr.Chris Onyemenam during Biometric Capturing of the National Identity card held at the Presidential Villa, Abuja

President Muhammadu Buhari yesterday at the Presidential Villa registered for the National Identity Card issued by the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC).

 The President noted that the exercise would confirm the nation’s population.

 He added that the national ID card would also complement the Permanent Voters’ Card (PVC) to be used eligible voters during elections in the country.

He said “I think this exercise is very important to confirm our population and those who are entitled to vote. That is those who are 18 years and above. It will complement the exercise of the permanent voters card.

So, for those who want their votes to count from whichever party or constituency, they should ensure that they and their families are properly captured.”

In a separate interview with Villa Correspondents, the Director General of NIMC, Mr. Chris Onyemenam, said the exercise would continue throughout the country.

 According to him, the corporation is planning to open the enrollment centres in all the nation’s primary schools and hospitals.

According to him, with the cooperation of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), the functions of the Commission will be extended to cover centres where the National Population Commission (NPC) carries out its responsibilities of recording births and deaths.

 On how many Nigerians have so far been captured, Onyemenam said “On our data base, we have a record of seven million. In collaboration with other agencies, in the next three months or so, we hope to quadruple that number.”

He continued “In the past, the private sector was expected to perform that role, so government did not focus on that. The close to seven million that we have in our data base is the product of the pilot scheme that we embarked upon to demonstrate the value of the scheme.

 “Now that the MDAs are going to step up the harmonization, the data base will be populated in a matter of weeks.

“As a matter of fact, we are at the stage of migrating the data from the Bank Verification Number and that is about 20million.

 We are truly on course and appreciate Mr. President for that recent directive that biometrics data bases in government agencies should be expeditiously harmonized.”

Share this Article
Leave a comment

Leave a Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.