Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan is scheduled to launch the National Electronic Identity Card for all the citizens Thursday.
The president directed the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) to ensure that the registration is concluded by the end of this year.
NIMC also has the mandate to issue a unique National Identification Number (NIN) to all eligible citizens, provide a secure means to access the national identity database in order to authenticate and verify identities, and to issue the e-ID Card to every eligible citizen.
The National e-ID Card is a multi-purpose card for identification, electronic signatures, biometric on-card verification, and other applications. The Card, which would subsequently be issued to all Nigerians who have successfully enrolled for the National Identification Number (NIN), has five applications already activated at issuance, with a built in capacity to host more applications on request.
Director, Corporate Communications of NIMC, Anthony Okwudiafor said the process of activating applications on the card would be done in phases. The first phase, according to him, would include International Civil Aviation Organisation, which has to do with compliant travel application to be used as a Machine Readable Travel Document (MRTD), for local/regional travel; Nigerian Electronic Identity (‘eID’) application to be used to authenticate an individual’s identity; Electronic Public Key Infrastructure (‘ePKI’), as application to be used for identification, authentication and digital signatures; Fingerprint Match-on-Card (‘MoC’) functionality to be used for biometric verification; Banking application (‘EMV’) to be used for deposit, withdrawal, payment, transfer, inquiry; while phase two would be Drivers’ License (IDL) – to be used as international driver’s license;
Transport application to be used for loading credits/units on local bus terminals; Tax application to be used to make tax payments, verify payments; Voter ID application to be used to cast a vote; Pension application, to be used to manage retirement savings account; NHIS application for e-health, to be used to upgrade, renew, health insurance; Insurance application to be used to subscribe to insurance policy, renew insurance policy; SIM application to be used as repository for saving a cardholders personal numbers previously registered with the telecoms regulator; and Custom tool used to save space for more applets in the future.