President Muhammadu Buhari was officially presented with his National Identity card on Wednesday by the Director General of the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), Chris Onyemenam, at a brief ceremony in the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
Speaking with State House correspondents at the end of the presentation, Onyemenam disclosed that the database of about 20 million Nigerians had already been captured.
He said: “We did two things. First we demonstrated to the President how the national identification number can be used to confirm the identity of an individual even if the person is not present. That is the reason why we said the identification number is a security number. Because if you have access to our data base, you can confirm the identity of an individual.
“Secondly we presented the electronic card to the President and we demonstrated to him how it will be taken round. This is one Rome that was not built in a day, slow and steady with the help of harmonization and integration. We are getting rapidly far more than we ever did before, in trying to unite our data base, and I demonstrated that.”