FEC Okays N30.66bn For New National Identity Card,While Our Roads Remain Death Traps.

ABUJA—THE weekly Federal Executive Council, FEC, yesterday rose from a prolonged session with an approval for the National Identity Management Commission, NIMC, to embark on the provision of an electronic national identity card for all Nigerians of 18 years old and above, at the cost of N30.66 billion.
The FEC meeting which was presided over by President Goodluck Jonathan, with Vice President Namadi Sambo, said the project entails the development of a comprehensive, biometric database for all Nigerian adults.
The meeting also approved the pulling together of all planning professionals and the establishment of Planning and policy analysis cadre for all the Ministries, Departments and Agencies, MDAs, to meet up with the current expectations of the present government for effective projects execution, evaluation and monitoring, as well as analysis.
The Minister of Information, Mr Labaran Maku, who briefed State House Correspondents, at the end of the meeting which lasted for about eight hours disclosed that the e-national identity would assist Nigeria tackle some security issues as well as solve so many statistics challenges in various sectors of the economy.
He disclosed that “the unified identity Management System, NIMS, for Nigeria was today approved by the Federal Executive Council for implementation”.

The new integrated data system which will capture all Nigerians from the ages of 18 and above will bring down the cost of data processing and storage by different agencies in the country.
The project which is to be managed by the National Identity Management Commission, is to be executed in conjunction with different agencies of government which presently keep their own separate identity data.
Such agencies, the Minister said, “include INEC, Federal Road Safety Commission, FRSC, National Health Insurance Scheme, NHIS, amongst others with the new integrated system, all existing data will be networked to create a common data base from where several agencies can access for their own purposes”.
The system will also bring down the cost of data management by the several public institutions including banks, pension commission etc.
Besides, “one area where the programme will be very useful for the nation is national security management since all citizens data are expected to be captured. The first phase of the exercise which is expected to start from this year will cost N30.066 billion to be spread across from 2011 to 2013”, he said.
He said “the FEC today (yesterday) gave a boost to the culture of planning, monitoring and evaluation of government programmes and projects by approving a professional officer cadre for the federal public service”.
According to him, “it has been observe over time that government programmes/projects have suffered due to lack of data, analysis and well coordinated plans. Also evaluation of project execution and performance has been very difficult because data ollection, collection and analysis has been rather uncoordinated”.
Maku, explained that “in view of the present emphasis on the execution of national transformation programme toward the realisation of national vision 20:2020, planning should now take centre stage in the public service”.
He said “the PPS cadre will be pooled together as professional cadre and posted to MDAs to coordinate the planning, research, policy analysis and performance measurement of the MDA projects and programmes.


SOURCE Nigerian newspapers.