Some residents of  Port
Harcourt have called on the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) to extend the ongoing National Identity Card Registration to local government areas in the country.
They said last Monday that rural dwellers found it difficult to participate in the exercise due to the hurdles in the registration process.
A  civil servant, Mr Richards Pepple,said it took him five days to register in Port Harcourt due to alleged poor handling of registration equipment by registration officials.
“I visited the NIMC office in Port Harcourt five consecutive days before I was able to be registered. “The delay will not encourage rural dwellers that do not have a place to spend the night in the township or funds to sustain themselves, if the exercise goes beyond a day. “Extending the registration to every local government council headquarters in the country will guarantee full participation of Nigerians in the exercise,” he said.
A businessman, Mr Benson Igwe, said the commission needed to improve on its facility and speed up the process to encourage full participation by the people.
He said that it took officials days to register applicants due to poor Internet services.“It took me more than a week to finally get captured because NIMC officials always complained about poor network which has negatively affected the exercise.
“If services are not improved by NIMC in the weeks to come, Nigerians might begin to lose interest in getting registered,” Igwe said.
A trader, Mrs Helen Brown,said she was lucky as it took her same day to complete her registration.
She, however, said that some participants who were ahead of her on the queue left because it took NIMC officials several hours to complete a single registration.