It is with the highest degree of respect that I wish to draw the attention of President Ahmed Bola Tinubu (GCFR), Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, to the plight of agents of NIN registration working under NIMC licensed operators nationwide, over non-payment of enrolment fees for the last one year and eight months by NIMC. Recall that NIMC went into an agreement with some partners in 2020 to carry out NIN enrolment at the cost of $1 (N350) and the partners are expected to purchase biometric equipment with their funds.
Your Excellency Sir, we are making this appeal based on your track record as a listening democrat which keeps on manifesting in your policies and programmes in just two months plus as the president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria which has impacted positively in a quest for our nation-building. Sir, we are Nigerians of approved NIMC licensees who carried out massive NIN enrolment in the cities and rural areas of 774 LGAs in Nigeria including areas with security challenges from the inception of the project in 2020 to date. In this national assignment, we have sadly lost a few members and some equipment to the insecurity.
We have contributed immensely to the realisation of over 100 million NINs captured in the NIMC database, which was widely celebrated by the then Minister of Communications and Digital Economy without finding it necessary to settle the real foot soldiers that carried out the exercise. Also, it might interest you to know that the majority of the people that are participating in this exercise are mostly young graduates with a substantial number of women participating with pre-requisite ICT knowledge. These young men and women got trained by NIMC with training fees paid by the licensees through Remita and at the end of the training, individuals sourced loans from banks, relations and other financial institutions and purchased the necessary equipment and spent lots on logistics for the success of the exercise but we are being abandoned with no any communication from both licensees and NIMC.
We have lodged several complaints with the NIMC, Ministry of Communication and Digital Economy and other identified stakeholders to consider our plight but to no avail.
Sir, from January 2022 to March 2023, the licensees have received invoices for the work done, but up till today, they have not got the release of payment from NIMC due to the non-release of funds by the Ministry of Finance.
It is in light of the above situation that I humbly request the intervention of His Excellency, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, to come to our rescue by directing the Federal Ministry of Finance to, as a matter of urgency, settle the enrolment licensed partners immediately based on the current exchange rate (between N700 and N800 per successful enrolment).
Your Excellency, we now find it difficult or almost impossible to continue with the exercise due to backlogs of financial burden and our debtors are now in legal battles with us.
We look forward to Your Excellency’s quick intervention.
Ibrahim Usman wrote from Sokoto Road, Kaduna, and can be reached via [email protected]
