The National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) has solicited the support of the Association of Local Government of Nigeria (ALGON) to establish enrolment centres in the 774 local governments for effective grassroots National Identity Number (NIN) registration. Read moreNIMC Director-General Chris Onyemenam made the call during the first Local Government Areas (LGAs) Summit on the National Identity Management System (NIMS) yesterday in Abuja.

He said NIMC will soon set up the centres and kick off local government NIN enrolment.
According to Onyemenam, “NIMC is calling for collaboration and partnership of the ALGON because there is need to upgrade the nation’s database and records, if we don’t do this we can never have up to date national identity management system.”
He added that if the country has “no way of telling the identity of an individual and affirming that identity, we will not be able to collect government revenues properly both at Federal, State and local government levels and we would not be able to wage a good war against crime and criminal activities especially those that are related with identity of an individual.”
He said “the journey of carrying out massive local government NIN enrolment can only be a success with the effective and collaborative cooperation of Local Government Chairmen in partnership with NIMC.
Chief Nwabueze, who is the leader of the delegation said, the summit has been grouped into three zones with Abuja to cover the Northeast, Northwest; Lagos to cover Southwest and while Asaba will cover Southsouth.
The arrangement, he said, is to allow the summit cover the zones and eliminate challenges that might come up if chairmen gather in one hall for such a meeting.
“It is good that NIMC took this bold step, knowing that using ALGON will record good success in NIN registration,” he said.

by: Franca Ochigbo
Culled from The Nation newspaper