“Won s’epe fun o ni? Oo p’oo r’owo mi ni?” It is the driver bellowing in raw Ibadan accent, wondering if the road user behind him is “cursed” and if he “didn’t see his hand”. In Ibadan, it is de rigueur to drive cars without a functioning trafficator, so long the driver is willing to flap his outstretched hand when turning left, and the passenger seated by him is willing to oblige in the case of a right turn.
A short, bald, old man with full Ogbomoso tribal marks, the driver decelerates on the dusty road and pulls over by a structure that, from the outside, looks like a kiosk. To the left is a wooden bench sitting three middle-aged men sipping dry gin in the scorching mid-day sun; and to the right, a door left ajar plus a ragged generator in a state of extended disuse.
The driver indicates it is time his passenger disembarked but the journalist-passenger imagines there has been a mix-up: only a carpenter’s shop can be around here; this ‘kiosk’ can surely not be the Ibadan North-East Local Government, Iwo Road office of the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC). But it is.
Anti, won fe register o, an elderly woman hollers at the NIMC official within.
NO FUEL DONOR, NO REGISTRATION
“I’m sorry uncle, registration is not possible today,” says the fair-complexioned lady in a courteous, in fact apologetic, tone — the type that is uncharacteristic of Nigerian public service officials.
“We have not had power supply for some weeks now, so we have only been operating based on the goodwill of applicants who donate fuel to us. But we have not been that lucky today; no one has donated fuel to us.”
She directs the journalist — although she thinks he is just a random member of the public — to “special centres” where electricity supply is constant.
“You won’t have problems registering at the University College Hospital (UCH) because light is guaranteed,” she says. “Likewise the University of Ibadan (UI). You can go to either of these two special centres on any day of your choice.”
But UI and UCH are centres for the elite — for the professors, lecturers, undergraduates and postgraduates — the people who can pepper NIMC officers with verbose, grandiloquent English, who have the clouts to challenge NIMC’s systemic anomalies and the stage to expose them to the public. What about the NIMC centres for the common man — the ones at Beere, Oje, Oja-Oba, Ona Ara, those people who ‘have no one but God’?
N200 FUEL CONTRIBUTION FOR “FREE’’ REGISTRATION
It is somewhat strange that at least three NIMC staff do not know that the Ona Ara Local Government registration centre is not located inside the LG secretariat itself, like the Iwo Road centre. A rigorous road journey — initially in a car but subsequently on a motorcycle — through Beere and Akanran to the Ona Ara LG secretariat turns out a fruitless journey, despite a downpour neither spares the cyclist nor his passenger. Following a detour, again by motorcycle, we finally locate the NIMC office at Ona Ara, arriving approximately two hours before the 4pm daily deadline for registering applicants. After a one-and-a-half-hour wait, the screeching sound of the generator comes to an abrupt end and a deafening silence descends upon the building.
“We’re out of fuel so it’s over for today,” declares a robustly-built man who had been carrying himself with the swagger of a supervisor. It is a news that devastates an aged couple who had been in the queue for more than two hours. The wife, ostensibly in her late sixties, wobbles towards one of the NIMC officers to register her displeasure with the development. She is told to return the following day, in the morning rather than the afternoon, and with a N200 contribution towards the fueling of the generator. The N200 fuel fee is not specific to the Ona Ara registration centre; it is common to hundreds of centres scattered all over the country where power supply is a challenge.
TWO UNCOMMON NIGERIANS
The situation is far worse at Ibadan South East Local Government centre, located at the LG office inside Mapo Hall, Oja Oba. For “some months” — predating back to July when this visit was made — the building housing the NIMC registration centre lacked power. Three people confirmed at different times that the situation was brought to the notice of the LG Chairman but nothing was done. Therefore, for the identity card registration to take place, members of the public contribute money to fuel the generator serving the centre.
“We’re done for today,” the NIMC official says as he switches off the generator at about 3pm on the day of the visit. The reason, he explains, is that he needs to save the remaining fuel to “pull the data” he had gathered all day.
Pulling the data is as important, if not more important, than the enrolment itself. Now, when registrants have been successfully enrolled, they are given what is called a Tracking Slip — a paper they must present roughly a week later to collect their National Identification Number (NIN). The information on the Tracking Slip is stored at NIMC’s back end, and this is what the enrolment officer uses to generate — or pull, in NIMC lingo — the NIN. Therefore, to register an applicant and not pull the NIN is waste of time, both for the officer and for the applicant.
A sudden agitation descends upon the waiting room. A young lady who has waited for long — long enough to have powered her dead phone to roughly 50 percent charge from a socket in the waiting room — responds with a strikingly long hiss. “Why didn’t you tell us from start you didn’t have enough fuel?” she yells. “Why waste my f**king time?”
The enrolment officer, a calm, clean-shaven, soft-spoken, simply but neatly dressed young man with a suspiciously innocent mien — one look at him and you can almost conclude he is a ‘pastor’ — attempts to placate the angry lady, who, rather than hear him out, angrily pulls out her phone from the socket and swings her voluptuous, scantily-covered hips out of the door.
“Okay, we will contribute fuel money,” offers another waiting applicant, as though saying we’re not all as ill-mannered as that one who just ignored you.
“No, I cannot collect money from you. Never!” the enrolment officer cuts in. “The only thing you can do is buy the fuel and empty it in the generator. But for me to collect your money, never.”
This NIMC official is surely not your everyday Nigerian. He belongs to a narrow clique of NIMC enrolment officers who will not demand a kobo from members of the public, and will not accept when offered. From Oyo and Anambra States, where many centres were physically visited, there were two shining lights, the other a fair-complexioned, pint-size woman who supervises the NIMC registration at Idemili North Local Government, Anambra State. One encounter with her and it is clear she loves her job; her banters are so intense, her passion so contagious and are personality so vivacious that even a sadist who enters her office must emerge from it with laughter.
30% EXTORTION FOR ‘OGA AT THE TOP’
A short, bald, old man with full Ogbomoso tribal marks, the driver decelerates on the dusty road and pulls over by a structure that, from the outside, looks like a kiosk. To the left is a wooden bench sitting three middle-aged men sipping dry gin in the scorching mid-day sun; and to the right, a door left ajar plus a ragged generator in a state of extended disuse.
The driver indicates it is time his passenger disembarked but the journalist-passenger imagines there has been a mix-up: only a carpenter’s shop can be around here; this ‘kiosk’ can surely not be the Ibadan North-East Local Government, Iwo Road office of the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC). But it is.
Anti, won fe register o, an elderly woman hollers at the NIMC official within.
NO FUEL DONOR, NO REGISTRATION
“I’m sorry uncle, registration is not possible today,” says the fair-complexioned lady in a courteous, in fact apologetic, tone — the type that is uncharacteristic of Nigerian public service officials.
“We have not had power supply for some weeks now, so we have only been operating based on the goodwill of applicants who donate fuel to us. But we have not been that lucky today; no one has donated fuel to us.”
She directs the journalist — although she thinks he is just a random member of the public — to “special centres” where electricity supply is constant.
“You won’t have problems registering at the University College Hospital (UCH) because light is guaranteed,” she says. “Likewise the University of Ibadan (UI). You can go to either of these two special centres on any day of your choice.”
But UI and UCH are centres for the elite — for the professors, lecturers, undergraduates and postgraduates — the people who can pepper NIMC officers with verbose, grandiloquent English, who have the clouts to challenge NIMC’s systemic anomalies and the stage to expose them to the public. What about the NIMC centres for the common man — the ones at Beere, Oje, Oja-Oba, Ona Ara, those people who ‘have no one but God’?
N200 FUEL CONTRIBUTION FOR “FREE’’ REGISTRATION
It is somewhat strange that at least three NIMC staff do not know that the Ona Ara Local Government registration centre is not located inside the LG secretariat itself, like the Iwo Road centre. A rigorous road journey — initially in a car but subsequently on a motorcycle — through Beere and Akanran to the Ona Ara LG secretariat turns out a fruitless journey, despite a downpour neither spares the cyclist nor his passenger. Following a detour, again by motorcycle, we finally locate the NIMC office at Ona Ara, arriving approximately two hours before the 4pm daily deadline for registering applicants. After a one-and-a-half-hour wait, the screeching sound of the generator comes to an abrupt end and a deafening silence descends upon the building.
“We’re out of fuel so it’s over for today,” declares a robustly-built man who had been carrying himself with the swagger of a supervisor. It is a news that devastates an aged couple who had been in the queue for more than two hours. The wife, ostensibly in her late sixties, wobbles towards one of the NIMC officers to register her displeasure with the development. She is told to return the following day, in the morning rather than the afternoon, and with a N200 contribution towards the fueling of the generator. The N200 fuel fee is not specific to the Ona Ara registration centre; it is common to hundreds of centres scattered all over the country where power supply is a challenge.
TWO UNCOMMON NIGERIANS
The situation is far worse at Ibadan South East Local Government centre, located at the LG office inside Mapo Hall, Oja Oba. For “some months” — predating back to July when this visit was made — the building housing the NIMC registration centre lacked power. Three people confirmed at different times that the situation was brought to the notice of the LG Chairman but nothing was done. Therefore, for the identity card registration to take place, members of the public contribute money to fuel the generator serving the centre.
“We’re done for today,” the NIMC official says as he switches off the generator at about 3pm on the day of the visit. The reason, he explains, is that he needs to save the remaining fuel to “pull the data” he had gathered all day.
Pulling the data is as important, if not more important, than the enrolment itself. Now, when registrants have been successfully enrolled, they are given what is called a Tracking Slip — a paper they must present roughly a week later to collect their National Identification Number (NIN). The information on the Tracking Slip is stored at NIMC’s back end, and this is what the enrolment officer uses to generate — or pull, in NIMC lingo — the NIN. Therefore, to register an applicant and not pull the NIN is waste of time, both for the officer and for the applicant.
A sudden agitation descends upon the waiting room. A young lady who has waited for long — long enough to have powered her dead phone to roughly 50 percent charge from a socket in the waiting room — responds with a strikingly long hiss. “Why didn’t you tell us from start you didn’t have enough fuel?” she yells. “Why waste my f**king time?”
The enrolment officer, a calm, clean-shaven, soft-spoken, simply but neatly dressed young man with a suspiciously innocent mien — one look at him and you can almost conclude he is a ‘pastor’ — attempts to placate the angry lady, who, rather than hear him out, angrily pulls out her phone from the socket and swings her voluptuous, scantily-covered hips out of the door.
“Okay, we will contribute fuel money,” offers another waiting applicant, as though saying we’re not all as ill-mannered as that one who just ignored you.
“No, I cannot collect money from you. Never!” the enrolment officer cuts in. “The only thing you can do is buy the fuel and empty it in the generator. But for me to collect your money, never.”
This NIMC official is surely not your everyday Nigerian. He belongs to a narrow clique of NIMC enrolment officers who will not demand a kobo from members of the public, and will not accept when offered. From Oyo and Anambra States, where many centres were physically visited, there were two shining lights, the other a fair-complexioned, pint-size woman who supervises the NIMC registration at Idemili North Local Government, Anambra State. One encounter with her and it is clear she loves her job; her banters are so intense, her passion so contagious and are personality so vivacious that even a sadist who enters her office must emerge from it with laughter.
However, in numerous centres across the country, NIMC officials have developed the habit of extorting the people, mandating them to pay between N200 and N1,000 for fuel or for lamination, which ordinarily should cost no more than N100.
Dozie Chukwu (not real names, to protect him from victimisation), a repentant NIMC official in Anambra State who says “this is not the kind of livelihood I hoped for”, discusses the practice extensively.
“For my level, Level 8, I earn N71,000. From that N71,000, I am expected to fund my centre. They don’t give you anything to cushion the effects of the expenses on your budget,” Chukwu says blandly, though it didn’t stop his despondence from being spotted.
“In the past, we were given N10,000 to N15,000 monthly to run the centres. But for more than a year, if not two, the subventions have stopped. You are supposed to buy fuel for a generator, service it if it gets spoilt, buy paper, buy data to send your work and print it.
“To make things easier, we had to tell the applicants to pay N200 for lamination of the NIN slips; when you’re done, you have some money left — your spoil of war — something to make yourself happy after the stress.
“Then the most annoying part, which I think most people are scared of and will not tell you even if you went round all the centres in Anambra State, is that you are expected to remit 30% of whatever you make to the state.
“Now, you collect N200, you laminate the NIN slip; by the time you remit 30% to the centre, then there is nothing to share for the three or four of you at the centre. Therefore, people started increasing the amount of money. That is why you go to some centres, they collect ₦500 while others charge up to N1,000.
“So, because some staff have gotten used to this extra cash, every centre is self-sufficient; everybody is relaxed, nobody is complaining — because at the end of the day you go home with N3,000 or N4,000 in your pocket and you still have money to settle the oga at the top in the state. If you don’t do that, they won’t give you the NIN slip.”
Dozie Chukwu (not real names, to protect him from victimisation), a repentant NIMC official in Anambra State who says “this is not the kind of livelihood I hoped for”, discusses the practice extensively.
“For my level, Level 8, I earn N71,000. From that N71,000, I am expected to fund my centre. They don’t give you anything to cushion the effects of the expenses on your budget,” Chukwu says blandly, though it didn’t stop his despondence from being spotted.
“In the past, we were given N10,000 to N15,000 monthly to run the centres. But for more than a year, if not two, the subventions have stopped. You are supposed to buy fuel for a generator, service it if it gets spoilt, buy paper, buy data to send your work and print it.
“To make things easier, we had to tell the applicants to pay N200 for lamination of the NIN slips; when you’re done, you have some money left — your spoil of war — something to make yourself happy after the stress.
“Then the most annoying part, which I think most people are scared of and will not tell you even if you went round all the centres in Anambra State, is that you are expected to remit 30% of whatever you make to the state.
“Now, you collect N200, you laminate the NIN slip; by the time you remit 30% to the centre, then there is nothing to share for the three or four of you at the centre. Therefore, people started increasing the amount of money. That is why you go to some centres, they collect ₦500 while others charge up to N1,000.
“So, because some staff have gotten used to this extra cash, every centre is self-sufficient; everybody is relaxed, nobody is complaining — because at the end of the day you go home with N3,000 or N4,000 in your pocket and you still have money to settle the oga at the top in the state. If you don’t do that, they won’t give you the NIN slip.”
To be continued
Source: ICIR
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