By Ahmed Rahma
Nigerians have continued to react to the request for a fee for the correction of bio-data for the National Identity Number (NIN) by the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC).
The commission, which reiterated that NIN registration is totally free, said it collects money for some services like the correction of addresses, names and others.
Last week, the NIMC regional coordinator in Lagos, Ms Funmi Opesanwo, said for gender correction, name modification/ name re-arrangement, NIN slip re-print attracts a sum of N500.
“For the date of birth correction, there is a processing fee of N15,000. For card renewal or card replacement, there is a processing fee of N5,000. For the modification of address or name, it is N500.
Ms Opesanwo also informed that the fees are to be paid to Treasury Single Account (TSA) of the federal government.
But this has not gone down well with many Nigerians, who kicked against the payment, saying the government should be offering these services for free to citizens.
On a popular social media platform called Twitter, one @JimohRasheed50 said, “Nigeria government has lost all moral right to remain in office. They are adding to our pain every minute. How can we reconcile paying such huge amount for correction on information already supplied which is already in the system? Again we are going backwards by the day.”
Another user of the social platform, @iyKenorahs said, “There’s hardly anybody who will give a wrong name or date of birth to the registration officer. It’s the official who will make the mistake in spelling a name or entering a date. Such mistake was made in my DOB on my driver’s license and to date, I can’t use it for identification.”
“I knew they will find a way to justify the extortion of the masses by their officials. Now, those who were suspended for sharp practices will be recalled to give teeth to their corruption. Yet, it’s the errors made by your staff that are being corrected by the affected persons,” he added.
“After a telephone conversation with a friend who works with NIMC in Kano, he said that the NIN registration is absolutely free in the North but in Southern Nigeria, we are allowing the Southern people to extort from us. Nigerians should resist this criminal act now”, @prof_aboki said.
“The charges for correction is just too much. It should be reduced. How much is the minimum wage that one would have to pay 15k apart from other charges just to get his/her NIN corrected? It’s unfair,” @Buk_flo commented.
“I don’t understand why I will pay #15,000 for correction on NIN. I’m I actually a Nigerian? Is this really my fathers’ land?”, @Princioustunde said.
Modupe Gbadeyanka 
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