Director General, NIMC, Mr. Chris Onyemenam

Amaka Eze

The Chairman, Senate committee on Identity Card and National Population Commission (NPC), Senator Maina Lawan, has called on the Director-General of National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) to quickly deliver on the National Identity Management System (NIMS).

Senator Maina made this call during the committee’s oversight visit to the Commission’s Headquarters in Abuja.

The committee was at the NIMC on a fact finding mission as well as to fully abreast itself of the Commission's activities and implementation of the NIMS project.

Lawan noted that the importance of the NIMS project to the development of the country led to a hundred per cent approval of the 2012 budget appropriation.

He added that with the fact-finding visit, the Committee will have first-hand information that will guide it on appropriations to NIMC in the 2013 budget appropriation.

He expressed the Committee’s readiness to complete the facility visit in order to make sure that the fund released on the project was judiciously utilised.

Responding, the Director-General of NIMC, Mr. Chris Onyemenam, stated that all funds released for the execution of the NIMS project were judiciously utilised.

He emphasised that massive deployment and installations were done at the back-end of the project at the NIMC’s Headquarters, and at the back up site located in one of the North central State of Nigeria.

Furthermore, Onyemenam explained that so far, funds released on the project were above 99 percent utilised, even as he listed some critical project areas as: the maintenance/professional support; completion of on-going renovations at all the NIMC’s offices nationwide; awareness/enlightenment Campaign; logistics supports and disengagement cost.

Other are: upgrading and updating of the NIMS project; development and job completion and the procurement and issuance of the General Multi-Purpose Identity Card (GMPC).

The NIMC boss also stated that part of the card personalisation devices have been deployed at the NIMC Headquarters, while enrolment centres are already opened in Abuja, and Lagos as well as some specially designated centres like CBN; National Assembly and Federal Secretariat.

He explained that other centres used during the pilot and Prove of Concept (POC) will soon be opened permanently once they are certified, adding that NIMC is on course and should meet up with the Roll-Out plan slated for April, 2013.