Kwara NIMC receives 1000 applications for national ID card daily

Coordinator of the National Identity Management Commission (NlMC) in Kwara State, Mr Habeeb Olumoh, on Wednesday disclosed that the commission attends to over 1000 applicants daily.

Olumoh said Jamb applicants form a large part of that number.

It would be recalled that the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB) made presentation of the national identity card a

Rotary International has said it is strategising on ways to reduce deaths associated with pregnancy complications by 50 per cent in the next three years.

National Coordinator for Rotary International Programme on Reduction of Maternal Mortality and Child Death, Professor Emmanuel Adedolapo Lufadejo, said this is possible because the causes of maternal mortality in Nigeria are preventable.

Lufadejo, who spoke during the National Family Planning Campaigns Zonal Sensitization, Planning and Inaugural meeting held in Jos, Plateau State, said to do this, Rotary will train nurses, doctors, providers, community health workers and other participants who would move into the hinterlands of each state prerequisite for registration for the 2019/2020 University Tertiary Matriculation Examination. The coordinator identified paucity of fund and lack of motivation of its staff as major challenges militating against the operations of the Commission.

Meanwhile, our correspondent observed that some residents of the state, who besiege the NIMC office in the state and its 12 zonal offices to collect their national identity cards, go through tough time. to educate the people on the risk of frequent pregnancy and other maternal health issues.

He said with effective family planning, maternal mortality could be reduced by 30 per cent, adding that records from the District Health Information Software (DHIS) in the last 15 years shows no significant change in maternal mortality in Nigeria despite increased efforts and funding to the cause.

Prof. Lufadejo said the campaign in Jos with all reproductive health coordinators and family planning coordinators in the North Central was to link them with other partners; like Planned Parenthood Federation of Nigeria (PPFN), and the Society of Gynaecology and Obstetrics of Nigeria (SOGON), to find strategies that would help reduce infant and maternal mortality in Nigeria.

The entrances of the Commission’s state office and zonal offices are manned by security personnel who control the crowd and ensure law and order. Some of the zonal centres created by the Commission to make the registration conducive in llorin are located at the Federal Secretariat, Amule, University of llorin, Okelele, among others.

Other registration centres are located in Omu-Aran, lsin, and Oke-Onigbin.

Some of the residents seeking to collect the card, including nursing mothers, described the process of registration and collection, as cumbersome

A prospective candidate for the 2019/2020 UTME, from Okelele area of Ilorin, claimed that he had spent two nights at the commission’s office in Ilorin and was yet to obtain the National Identity Card.

The residents called on the commission to further decentralise the registration centres to make the exercise less cumbersome.