NIN Registrations: PH Residents Lament Poor Process, Extortion

Participating in the ongoing National Identification Number (NIN) enrolment has evidently become a confounding and strenuous exercise for Port Harcourt residents.
Long queues at the NIN registration centres including the Head Office of the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) at Aba road in Port Harcourt are now regular features of the city. Apart from the long queues files of humans at the registration centres, the teeming participants also allege other attendant inconvenience, and frustrations such as extortions by the registration officers.
A random visit of The Port Harcourt Metro to the various centres revealed the difficulties and obvious challenges encountered by residents in participating in the national exercise.
Some of the residents, who spoke with The Port Harcourt Metro, said coinages such as ‘express registration’ were used by the enumerators to swindle the participants of extra charges from N5,000, N3,000 and N2,000, depending on the registration centres.
Nicky Solomon, who spoke with The Port Harcourt Metro, said he went to Rumuola and Rumuokwuta centres and was asked to pay N500 first before the commencement of the enrolment process, but he questioned the reason for the N500 charge.
“When I asked them why I should pay N500 first, they told me to go, that I was not ready for the registration, this is very bad.”
Another respondent, Mrs Mercy Akparawa, said that she was also asked to pay the sum of N500 before her enrolment, but she was not satisfied with the charge, and questioned further, but she was also bluffed by the operators of the enrolment centres.
Akparawa, said she visited another enrolment centres, at Okporo Road, and the operators still requested for extra charges. “When I got to Okporo Road, I discovered that the treatment was same, except that one of the operators explained that the N500 was for capturing, while a total of N3,500 was collected for normal process and N5,500 for express.”
Trust Obari in his response said, Government should create a special application for the process to make it easier for people to stay at home and do the registration by themselves. He added that “this will help in avoiding the crowds at the registration centres, due to the resurgence of the COVID-19 pandemic.”
In his response, Las Agwasiem said, “I enrolled in NIMC Office on Aba Road, Port Harcourt, since 2015, was given a slip and told to come later for the second slip due to bad network. Anytime I call the number they gave me, the response was always no network, I was later told to re-register because the previous registration couldn’t be up-loaded because of no network, this is fraud, it’s unfortunate that government didn’t put its house in order before embarking on the NIN registration process.”
In his own response, Akanimo Ezekiel said the Federal Government’s decision to link sims to NIN may be a good idea, but the process and method of registration were quite frustrating, considering its mass component and COVID-19 pandemic implications. “I am quite disappointed over the manner in which people are subjected to all manners of stress due to the NIN registration process. People scramble at the centres in obvious breach of COVID-19 protocols to get attention, and yet get frustrated in the process, the enumerators also give special preferences to influential people, who meet up their excessive demands and also pay extra charges to facilitate their registration.
However, the management of the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) in Port Harcourt has dismissed reports of extortion of money from applicants.
Rivers State Coordinator of NIMC, Amonia Ogene-Caro, in a statement said, the enrolment was free and none of the officials was directed to collect any arbitrary charges.
He said the applicants were free to access any of the enrolment centres spread across the 23 local governments and cautioned against the springing up of mushroom centres without due affiliation or authorisation by the commission.
Meanwhile, staff of NIMC in Rivers State have joined their colleagues across the nation to proceed on strike. The Port Harcourt Metro investigation revealed that the strike was based on demands of better incentives and welfare packages to meet up with the increasing demands of the job.
A staff of NIMC, who spoke on condition of anonymity said it had become most challenging for NIMC staff to attend to the mass based of citizens seeking registration at the centres. He decried the lack of protective kits at the offices, making the staff vulnerable to COVID-19, due to the ever-increasing crowds.