Not less than 300 officials of the National Identity Management Commission, NIMC, will be prosecuted for an alleged certificate forgery.
This was disclosed by the Director General of National Identity Management Commission, Chris Onyemenam, in Abuja on Monday, during a courtesy visit to the Chairman of the Independent Corrupt Practices and other related offences Commission, Ekpo Nta.
The NIMC boss said that of about 600 personnel that submitted their certificates for verification, about 300 were not cleared.
This he noted was after the staff were directed to submit their credentials for verification at the Federal Ministry of Education. He said the Commission was surprised to have found out that some of them were not genuine.
He said: “It was in the process of documenting them, because they were now to be employed as full time senior members of staff. Out of 600 people that submitted, about 280 to 300 were not cleared.”
The NIMC boss maintained that the exercise became necessary because of the desire of the management to have quality staff and to ensure that whatever they do conforms to the international best practice.
Onyemenam said: “As you know in IT related matters, no success can be achieved in gabbage in gabbage out. So it became clear to the management that one of the things that we needed to do was to ensure that we have quality staff.
“The level of success you can achieve depends on the quality of your personnel. It was in the course of our trying to ensure we attain international standard that we embarked on the verification exercise. We need what is internationally regarded as the minimum standard to enable us meet with infrastructure that we have deployed.”
Asked what will be the next line of action against those who presented forged certificates, the DG said: “If you have fake certificates, what is it? It is a criminal offence and the law will take its course.”
Onyemenam also requested the permission of the ICPC chairman to establish enrolment centres in all ICPC offices across the country.
Responding, Nta stressed that the new trend of identity theft was spreading fast, particularly among the youth and there is the need for strong collaboration between the two agencies to stem it.
According to him: “Identity is so much critical today that five per cent of theft in US today is done through identity theft. We worry about physical kidnapping, but through identity theft, you can be kidnapped and you are still sitting down in your place comfortably. That is electronic form of kidnapping.
“If we are to stem the misfortune of system cloning, you must have strong data base to make it possible to match pictures for proper identification.”
He urged the NIMC to ensure that the present identity card is done in such a way that it has strong link with other socio-services such as drivers’ licence, electoral processes, national health insurance scheme and the educational services, among others.
Nta noted that in the past, Nigeria had done similar exercise, but was unable to get the desired result, adding that Nigerians were waiting for the NIMC to deliver, while also commending the processes they have employed.
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