The Human Rights Writers Association, HURIWA, has asked President Bola Tinubu, to discontinue plans for the issuance of a new National Identity Card, describing the proposed exercise as fraudulent.
HURIWA noted that issuance of new ID cards amounted to misuse of the commonwealth of Nigerians, as the scheme was aimed at ripping the country of public funds.
According to HURIWA, the plan showed a lack of national strategy, to formulate and implement beneficial public policies governing the issuance of the identity cards.
These were contained in a statement on Sunday by HURIWA’s National Coordinator, Emmanuel Onwubiko.
On April 5, 2024, the NIMC announced its collaboration with the Central Bank of Nigeria and the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System to launch a new card having multiple functionalities, including for social and financial services.
The management of the commission had also clarified in a note on Friday titled “Key Facts About the Proposed New General Multipurpose National Identity Card,” that the new ID card would be a single, multipurpose card and not three separate cards.
HURIWA questioned how 133 million poor Nigerians suffering “crushing poverty”, were expected “to maintain working bank accounts to enable them collect the so-called single National ID.”
The statement read, “This is a scheme to rip off Nigeria of monumental and humongous amounts of public funds which will end up in the offshore bank accounts of top leaders and their mistresses and acolytes.
“We call on President Bola Tinubu to discontinue this sheer misuse of both the commonwealth of Nigerians and the plan to once more subject Nigerians to rounds of ordeals of queuing up in the hot sun or rains all over the country in their banks ... to obtain the dubious national identity cards." It further described as "poor thinking for NIMC to assume that all Nigerians have functional bank accounts to enable them get the ID from those banks.”
HURIWA also noted that a report showed that 50 per cent of Nigerians were unbanked and unbankable due to terrible poverty, adding that it was of the view that the plan was part of a sinister plot by “fast fingers” in the corridors of power to use the public funds to “empower their mistresses, friends and cronies.”
It then urged the Federal Government to rather adopt the International Passport as the most critical ID card.
