Abiodun Taiwo, Abeokuta
Former President Olusegun Obasanjo?on Monday?received his electronic National Identity Card from the National Identity Management Commission, NIMC, adding that his Owu tribal mark remains a permanent identity.
Obasanjo who spent about 10 minutes to activate the card as well as its inbuilt applications said the national identity card will surely reduce insecurity in the country.
Speaking at his mansion on the Presidential Hilltop Estate in Abeokuta, Ogun State where the management and officials of the NIMC brought the card to him, Obasanjo, noted that not many people know that he has three identity cards.
He listed the means of identification to include his international passport, the National Identity Card and his Owu tribal marks which are the six lines incisions on each side of his cheeks.
He equally asked how the functions inherent in the e-card would be beneficial to the people in his Ibogun village and what it would cost them.
His words ?Not many people know that I have three identity cards. The first is the international passport, the second is National Identity card and the third is my tribal marks. It is not funny that I?m collecting the National Identity card at a time that I?m unemployed and unemployable.
?What we have now is what we wanted to do in 1979 but not as complex as this one and also not as sophisticated as this.
Although we are getting the card late, but we are getting the best that technology can offer.
?I have my worries and I always express my feelings. I have got special treatment but how will it be for someone in my village to be captured?
?How much of this functionality in the card will be useful to him and how much will be paid knowing that poverty is still ravaging the rural dwellers? These are issues you will have to address,? he added.
Meanwhile, the Director-General of the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), Chris Onyemenan, has said that the Federal Government will not substitute international passport with the new National Electronic Identity Card.
Onyemenan disclosed this to reporters when he led other senior officials of NIMC to present former President Olusegun Obasanjo his e-ID card at the latter?s hilltop residence in Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital.
According to him, it was mere speculation that the government is planning to substitute international passports with the electronic identity card which was launched by President Goodluck Jonathan in August.
He said, ?This card works with existing electronic payment infrastructure in Nigeria. We are not building any new one. This card has the feature of biometric based authentication. The ECOWAS region has adopted the policy that national identity card can be used as a travel document. Once the Nigerian Immigration Service decides on what it wants to do, this card can be useful to them in meeting that obligation.
?And there is one impression I will like to use this opportunity to correct: I have seen in several newspapers where it is stated that the National Identity Management Commission is canvassing for the national identity card to substitute the Nigerian international passport; that is not true. In fact we feel very embarrassed because we have a very good working relationship with the Nigeria Immigration Service and it is helping us to check the incidence of illegal residents and non-citizens coming forward to enroll as citizens for the national identification number.?
Onyemenan allayed the fears being expressed by some Nigerians that the e-ID card could be used to perpetrate fraud, saying the card with its inbuilt technology was rather intended to stop fraud.
He also assured that the NIMC had put in place adequate arrangement to ensure that Nigerians residing in the hinterlands and the creeks are captured in its ongoing nationwide registration.
