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The immediate past youth chairman of Unenurhie community, in Ughelli North Local Government Area of Delta State, Hon. Friday Diamond aka ‘Ogbo,’ has called on the Federal Government to create more enrollment centres in the country, especially in local communities, in order to make the on-going national identity number registration easy and accessible to every citizen.
Diamond, who is a chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Evwreni Ward (08), and also fondly called the ‘Rioriorio’ of Africa by his political associates, made this known recently to our correspondent after a town hall meeting with leaders and elders of his community.
“On this issue of the national identity number registration that is currently going on across the country, I want to advise the Federal Government, especially the agency that is handling this project, to create more centres in every community in the country.
“This will make the registration easy and accessible to every Nigerian. From the statistics released by the National Population Commission, Nigeria is well over 180 million people. If this is true, then with the level of this NIN registration, we haven’t gotten 20 million people registered.”
Diamond said, “Quite a number of Nigerians are old people and can’t stand these long hours for the registration. Many others are incapacitated in one way or the other. There are so many people that are physically challenged today and thousands of others are vulnerable. If there is going to be success in such a national identity programme then all these kinds of people must be considered and there should be a way to register all of them.
“For instance, there is no way you will tell my mother to stand in that long queue in Ughelli North LGA secretariat where the programme is being done. The same goes to so many people in this village and other villages in the country.
The youth leader however suggested that, “In order to achieve success in this programme, I want to advise the Federal Government especially the particular agency that is in charge of the project to create more enrollment centres in every community across the country.
“When this programme first started in 2005, almost every community had a centre. We had a centre in this very town hall that time. This made it so easy and accessible to the elderly and the most vulnerable in every community to register. The record of success then was very huge.
“I still want the federal government to apply the same method if they really want all Nigerians to register. If they refuse to apply this system, then so many people wouldn’t be registered at the end. This therefore means denying those people of their fundamental rights as citizens of this country. In so doing, the government would be accused of marginalization and also having ulterior motives behind such national security, population and identity programmes in detriment to the minorities, vulnerable and the elderly in the country. This is absolutely not telling well of the Buhari government.”
