The staff union at the National Identity Management Commission has advised the Federal Government to use the National Identity Number to identify vulnerable Nigerians that qualify to benefit from its palliatives.
The Chairman of the union, Lucky Asekokhai, said the NIN would have resolved the challenges encountered in the selection of beneficiaries of the COVID-19 intervention programmes initiated by the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Management.
According to him, the NIN is more reliable than the Bank Verification Number and other modalities being used to identify vulnerable individuals.
Asekokhai explained that the NIN and payment applet embedded in the GMPC e-ID Card issued by the NIMC could resolve ‘controversies’ around the identification of beneficiaries of palliatives programmes.
He said, “The nearest solution to the problem is the use of the NIN issued by the NIMC to identify, authenticate and provide a real time identity of the real vulnerable.
“The NIMC has the only all-inclusive and reliable database in Nigeria. The BVN with its about 40 million records is restricted to holders of bank account numbers which most vulnerable Nigerians don’t have.
“The Independent National Electoral Commission’s record with over 84 million voters is restricted to Nigerians of voting age between 18 years and above.
“The records of the Federal Road Safety Corps, Nigeria Immigration Service and Nigerian Communications Commission SIM registration also have restrictions.”
Noting that available records did not reflect the actual population of poor people in the country, Asekokhai urged the Federal Government to support the NIMC to enrol all Nigerians for the NIN within the next three years.
Stressing that most of the vulnerable Nigerians had not been captured, he said, “The National Bureau of Statistics Executive Summary of the 2019 Poverty and Inequality report released on May 4, 2020, noted that over 82.9 million Nigerians lived below the poverty line.
“This implies that 40.1 per cent of the population live in poverty. The records from the National Social Register of the Poor and Vulnerable Households Distribution by States as of March 31, 2020, put the number of vulnerable households and individuals to about 2.6 million and 11 million respectively.
“However, on April 2, 2020, the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Management, Sadiya Umar Farouq, said 2.6 million vulnerable persons were currently to benefit from the Federal Government cash transfer intervention programme.”
So far, about 42 million Nigerians have been enrolled for the NIN, a number which Asekokhai described as inadequate for the country’s over 200 million population.
He added that the NIN, which he likened to the United State’s Social Security Number and the United Kingdom’s National Insurance Number, could be used to track Nigerians wherever they were, including COVID-19 patients who escaped from isolation centres.
Asekokhai further observed that the NIN would aid security agencies to check crime and insecurity, and help government at all levels to address the problem of ghost workers and other identity-related criminal activities.
“The NIMC requires all the funding from the federal college that is necessary to have all Nigerians registered,” he said, noting that the commission could contribute billions to the Federation Account if all its services and products were activated and supported.
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