Ahead of the 4th National Identity Day celebration, the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) says it has enrolled more than 89 million persons  in the ongoing nationwide National Identity Number (NIN) enrolment.
The Director-General of NIMC, Mr Aliyu Aziz, who disclosed this at a news conference in Abuja, Weekend, said there was an addition of 82 million to the seven million he met on assumption of office in November, 2015.
The theme of this year’s celebration is: “Traditional Institutions as Critical Stakeholders for Citizens Mobilisation”, and scheduled to hold in Abuja.
Aziz said as part of activities to commemorate the day, the Commission would partner with traditional institutions to reach out to the grassroots.
“In this year’s Identity Day, we are partnering with the traditional institutions and their leaders to create awareness on NIN enrolment.
“Last year we introduced Tokenization to make the enrolment easier for people. This year we want to leverage traditional institutions to reach the grassroots.
“We started with people in the urban areas, remaining those in rural areas.
“We want to continue to grow the database by carrying the grassroots along, Since then, we have been growing the database at the average of two to three million monthly.
“The 89 million are the mainstream people so there are still remaining the local people in village, petty traders, market people and artisan in rural areas across the country. NIN is the right of everyone,” he said.
Aziz said Identity is a tool for empowerment, adding that greater use of digital Identity would help bring about development and coordination for better delivery of government services.
He said the Commission had increased its equipment upgrade from 1,000 to 29,000 nation wide, urging the new enrollees to always go with literate people to reduce errors in the process of their enrolment.
While attributing the collapse of data centres to the equipment upgrade, Aziz said however that the Commission had acquired more equipment to improve on the enrolment exercise.
He promised that the Commission would soon allow people to do independent modification of their data through NIMC app as soon as they were through with the integration.
The Director-General, who said the Commission charges some stipends for modification of biodata of enrollees, however, reiterated that the enrolment was free for every citizen and legal residents.
He urged the media to sustain the campaign of educating the populace in the hinterland, particularly in local languages.