The National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) has explained that Nigerians will have to pay for the new multipurpose national Identity card to ensure that it is produced for only those who need it.
The Head of Card Management Services at NIMC, Dr. Peter Iwegbu, stated this on Thursday during a media workshop organized by the Commission in Lagos.
Iwegbu said the decision was made by the Engr. Bisoye Coker-Odusote-led NIMC to avoid repeating the mistake of the past efforts to issue physical cards to Nigerians for free, which many Nigerians did not collect.
According to him, over two million cards were produced in the previous attempt to issue free National ID cards by the NIMC, but many of them were uncollected to date.
“Before we stopped due to funding, we produced more than two million cards but a lot of them are still in our office, people were not able to pick them up because they didn’t need it,” he said.
Limited government revenue
Aside from the issue of collection,…