A group, Democratic Good Governance in Kogi state, has called on the federal government to “do the needful in the area of funding the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) to enable applicants seeking to obtain the cards achieve their aims without being extorted by registration officials.”
Addressing newsmen in Lokoja yesterday, the state chairman of the group, Evangelist Peter Akogu, lamented that poor funding of the Commission had made the applicants to pay N200 to cover the cost of fuel and lamination of card printouts.
He said: “It is worrisome and disheartening that registrants were being tasked to pay for fuel which should ordinarily be provided by the federal government.
“Our findings revealed that non release of adequate funds from the National headquarters of the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) to its state was responsible for extortion at the various registration centres across the state and the over 20 centres across the state don’t have power supply making the officials of the Commission to depend on generators to power the systems.”
While calling on the federal government to provide enough funds for the commission because of its importance to the citizens, Akogu noted that government “cannot fight corruption effectively where organisations such as NIMC are poorly funded.”