Lagos State Governor, Mr. Babatunde Fashola (SAN) has stated that Nigerians were forced to go through hell in their quest to pick up their Permanent Voters’ Cards (PVCs).
He described the development as failure of past governments.
The governor spoke during the presentation of his National ID Card by the Director General of the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), Mr. Chris Onyenmena, at the Lagos House, Ikeja.
According to him, Nigeria is paying for the botched attempts at capturing every individual in the country in a common data base.
He said: “I need to emphasis that this is a very important undertaking for all Nigerians. What we have not got right in the previous exercise, we are all paying for it now. One cannot really over emphasize the role a common and reliable identity management exercise will play.
“Government cannot provide services for people who will remain anonymous and the national ID Card helps government in doing many things in terms of planning. If this had been done successfully, it would have eliminated or substantially reduced the stress we put ourselves through in order to get PVC to vote.
“So anyone who is involved in this must know that if they do it well, you are contributing to building Nigeria and if you do it badly, you are undermining the country.”
Earlier, Onyenmena explained the distinction between a Unique Identification and Ordinary Card Issuance, describing unique identification as biometric based.
He said: “We are here to present your Identity Card to you and thank you for the support you have been giving to the commission. I recall that Lagos and Abuja are selected for the pilot scheme of the exercise. We are presently operating from 23 locations and the expectation is to cover all the LCDAs”.
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