The National Identity Management Commission has earmarked equipment for the national identity enrolment in all the 36 states of the federation as well as the Federal Capital Territory.
The Deputy Director, Corporate Communications, NIMC, Mr. Abdulhamid Umar, confirmed this in a telephone interview with our correspondent in Abuja on Wednesday.
Umar said but for seven states, the commission had activated the equipment and started registration ahead of the planned formal ceremony to announce the national identity enrolment exercise.
According to him, the exercise has yet to begin in seven states in the North where there have been intense security concerns.
He said, “We have established presence in all the states of the federation because we have deployed equipment in all of them. We have activated the equipment in 29 states of the federation.
“As we speak now, you can walk into any of the centres in the states and get registered. In the Federal Capital Territory, we already have 10 enrolment centres.”
The Federal Government had in 2001 awarded a contract worth $214m to a consortium led by French firm, Sagem, for the production of identity cards for all Nigerian citizens.
The contract was, however, marred in 2003 by allegations that Nigerian officials collected more than $2m in bribes to influence the award of the contract.
However, the commission established by the NIMC Act, 2007, took over the functions, assets and liabilities of the Department of National Civil Registration, which handled the identity card contract.
The DNCR was established by Decree 51 of 1979 when Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo was the Head of State. Incidentally, Obasanjo also signed the NIMC Act that abrogated the civic registration organisation in 2007 as a civilian President.