Six Local Firms Race to Produce National eID Card

The National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), last week Friday held the financial bid opening for the local production of the National eID Card, a penultimate step in the selection of local manufacturers for the eID Card recently launched by the President in August  last year.
 
Six firms, including Electronic Pay Plus Ltd, the Nigerian Security Printing and Minting Plc and Secure ID Ltd were involved in this final race for a possible selection.

It was learnt that to ensure sufficient local capacity the NIMC plans to appoint a few of the firms and guide them in the process of attaining the appropriate technical specifications and global standards which it has set.

Currently there is no local manufacturing firm that has been certified and or accredited or with sufficient experience to produce the eID Card.

However sources close to the Card Manageemnt Services Department confirmed that as part of the Commission’s local content policy, a strategic plan has been put in place to ensure that local manufacturers with various related levels of competencies are enabled to acquire the required technical expertise and would be guided to achieve the set standards and certification to ensure that in the near future the Commission will no longer have to import the eID Cards the way it currently does.

This will help build local content level, indegenious expertise and technology transfer as well as create employment opportunities, in line with the Transformation Agend of the Presdient.

Speaking at the Bid Opening, Mr. Ibrahim Abdullahi, general manager, Finance and Investment, NIMC, who chaired the proceedings explained that the process which had been ongoing for sometime now included a study of the existing Cards Industry – both card manufacture and card personalisation – to enable the Commission ascertain the best strategy to adopt to support possible local manufacturers to achieve the required capacities and competencies within a short time, in line with the Commission’s objectives under the Card Scheme of the National Identity Manageemnt System (NIMS).

This he said was in line with the Mr. President’s Transformation Agenda.

According to him, the Commission is also mindful of the fact that the NIMS Card scheme, when fully issued will have in excess of 150m in circulation and with an estimated annual replacement rate of about 15%.

He further explained that the Commission worked on the design of the Card for over  one year. This partly accounts for the long time it took to start issuing the Cards after Government gave its approval in November 2012, noting that NIMC can confidently say its Card is unique and very difficult to counterfeit or forge.

Since the Card was launched in August 2014, Mr. Abdullahi said, the Commission has taken delivery of  about 6.6m Cards, part of the 13m cards under the pilot scheme approved in 2012.

Already these Cards are being issued to their owners from Abuja and Lagos and in another week or two, from all State Offices of the  NIMC, nationwide.

He enjoined the companies, most of whom were not represented by their Chief Executives to please take the exercise and the impending assignment very serious, warning that the Commission will not hesitate to wield the big stick to avoid ugly situations of the past where successful bidders had held the Commission  to ransome for non-performance and thereby slowed the pace of implementation of the NIMS project.