One of Nigeria’s former presidents, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo today collected his electronic National Identity Card from the National Identity Management Commission, NIMC, in an exercise which saw him spending over 10 minutes to activate the card as well as its inbuilt applications.
Obasanjo, who could not just undertake the process without exerting his characteristic wit, 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).
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 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.
Hear him, “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.
The erstwhile president averred that the e-national identity card would assist the nation in “intelligence gathering” which would go a long way in tackling the security challenges ravaging the land.
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