Vice-President Namadi Sambo on Thursday said the ongoing registration of Nigerians by the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) would check fraudulent activities in the country.
Sambo said, after enrolling into the Centralised National Identity Database system at the State House, Abuja, that the registration, when completed, would assist financial institutions and other agencies in checking fraudulent activities.
“This is very impressive and I want to seize this opportunity to say that this is one of the major achievements of Mr President’s Transformation Agenda.
“The exercise for every Nigerian to have an identity means the avenue for security, the avenue for economic development.
“Today, our banks cannot issue loans to Nigerians because they say Nigerians do not have address. You go to the bank, your name is Garba, after taking the loan you become Daniel and they cannot know where you are.
“I want to seize this opportunity to impress on the management of NIMC to ensure that they meet the target time for the completion of this work”.
Sambo described the scheme as laudable and charged the leadership of the NIMC to complete the registration of all eligible Nigerians by the Dec. 2014 deadline earlier issued to the Commission.
The Vice-President gave the assurance that government would continue to assist NIMC for the successful execution of the project.
He called on all Nigerians to cooperate with the management of NIMC for the smooth implementation of the National Identification Number (NIN) scheme.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that President Goodluck Jonathan, while launching the enrolment exercise for the issuance of the NIN last October, issued the ultimatum to the NIMC to register all Nigerians by the end of next year. (NAN)
