By Stanley Iwuoha
As part of efforts to sanitise the system and ride the Commission of all corrupt tendencies, the National Identity Management Commission, NIMC has mobilized a crack team of taskforce to clamp down on all extorionists parading themselves as NIMC officials and agents at various National Identity Number, NIN enrollment centres across the country .
The Director General of the Agency, Odusote Cocker disclosed this on Friday in Abuja, while briefing newsmen on her achievements in the last nine months in office.
Odusote said under her watch, no NIMC staff caught in any form of malpractice and variant to the Commission’s rules and regulations would be spared as such persons would be made to face the full rot of the law.
She vowed to reduce the man hours being wasted at various enrollment centers through the establishment of news registration centres and upgrade of old equipment across the country.
As part of efforts to actualize this, she said the Commission had come up with a self-help solution that would enable prospective enrollees with challenges of modification to do so at the comfort of their homes without necessarily going to NIMC centre for assistance.
“We are clamping down extortioners parading themselves as NIMC staff. A lot of people have lost their money to extortioners.
“Any staff of NIMC that tries to work with illegal perpetrators will face disciplinary committee and be tried according to the Cybercrime Act 2015 and the Nigeria Data Protection Act 2023. Same with any illegal perpetrators.
“We will make sure we create proper communication to gauge against extortioners. We are trying to ensure that life is easy and seamless. One should not spend three to four hours in the NIMC office because of NIN services. It is something I will not allow to continue to happen. We will provide all necessary means to address the issue.’’
The DG further disclosed that the plans were underway to review NIMC service rates to align with current economic realities, but assured that it would not be exorbitant for citizens to carry.
“We are going to review our rate. It is not going to be much, but it will be reviewed. We have not reviewed our rate for a long time. It is not going to be exorbitant”.
Also speaking, she said plans were on the way to harmonise and integrate all the MDAs in a short period of time in line with the Presidential directives that all government ministries and agencies are fully integrated for more efficient service delivery.
According to her, the idea is to provide robust service for Nigerian citizens and legal residents.
‘‘I’m sure that you’ll recall that at some point this year, the president did say that there will also have a contribute implemented in full. But we already registered into and not to wait for that because it’s already in our mandate’’.
To stop multiple points of registration, she said, ‘‘Our mandate speaks of integration and harmonization across the ministries, department and agencies. The Nigeria immigration service is an example of an agency of government already integrating its systems with NIN. The Nigeria immigration service is now using NIN information to now issues passport, which has never been down in the history of the establishment or on both commission .
‘‘So just to let you know that when you put in your NIN, those fills are automated with your information and that’s why they ask you to go back to NINC if there is a name mismatch. And this same which has been done successfully with the Nigeria immigration service is now been replicated across borders .
You would recall I made a reference to the fact that we’ve got 20 working rules and this is exactly what we are doing and this also inform the decision in why we had to quickly harmonies all the student loan inverter regarding HEFON so you are able to input your NIN.’’
She said the Commission under her supervision had attained a milestone not only in the enrollment process, but also in easing the process, cleaning up the system, deploying latest technology to upgrade their aging equipment, upscale capacity of staff for optimum service delivery.
Meanwhile, the DG also announced that plans were on for upward review of cost of their services but not at exorbitant rate in line with ongoing reforms in the agency.
