The Managing Director, National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), Mr Aliyu Aziz has said that the commission would engage private sector to hasten the production of electronic identity cards to citizenry.

Aziz said this when he visited the Managing Director of the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja on Friday.

He stressed the need to clear the backlogs of identification and this could only be done through public-private partnership.

NIMC boss urged the general public should to remain patient as the commission is working hard to ensure that all who registered get their card.

According to him, the Card Management Service Department is now fully working on a first-in-first out basis and had also gone far into the 2013/14 records.

“NIN is as important as the card. We know that the general public want the card, but we are appealing to them to be patient because we need to balance things.

“And moving forward entails us to engage the private sector in the printing of the cards so that all the backlogs can be cleared.’’

He added that the commission in a bid to increase production had partnered with state governments and donors to fund its activities.

He also said that with the economic recession, the commission had been able to work together with stakeholders to generate fund for its activities, adding that more collaborative results had been visible so far.

He further called for more partnership with NAN to enhance the dissemination of its awareness programme to the public on the need to come out en mass to register in the on-going scheme.

Earlier, Mr Bayo Onanuga, Managing Director of NAN, reaffirmed the agency’s determination to strengthen its partnership with NIMC to facilitate the progress of the scheme.

Onanuga said that the work of the commission was an enormous task to capture over 180 million people, saying that the partnership was necessary to help reinforce the activities of the commission to a wider group.

“We are ready to help spread the message to Nigeria because we know that it is an enormous task to register about 180 million people. It is a great work and we believe that this partnership will go a long way to ease the process and also improve performance of the commission,’’ he said.

(NAN)