Governance Goes Digital in Ondo with Residency Card Take-off
At the inception of Governor Olusegun Mimiko’s administration in Ondo State in 2009, he launched a 12-point programme that will help mobilise the people to harness all natural resources, create and use wealth for the collective fulfilment of individual comfort in the state. One of the 12-point programmes led to the emergence of the Residency Card project tagged: ‘Kaadi Igbe Ayo’ . The multipurpose digital card is designed to help the state government manage, monitor and audit all free services that the state will be offering to all residential persons.
Managed by the State Information Technology Agency (SITA), the digital card, which comes with high security features, is being distributed free of charge to all interested persons, upon registration.
The launch of the initiative last year attracted assuring and informed comments regarding the expected impact of the project on the people of the state. Speaking at the launch, former Minister for Information, Labaran Maku, who represented the federal government at the event described the scheme as a tool that will fast-track the socioeconomic development of the state, predicting that the programme will revolutionize the state’s economy.
The former Minister who lauded Governor Olusegun Mimiko for standing firm by building on the developmental legacies left behind by the late sage, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, said his administration had placed emphasis on social welfare in all ramifications, targeted at making life better for the people rather than for personal aggrandizement, stressing that the residency card is truly revolutionary in all sense, even as he tagged it the first in Nigeria and the world.
In his submission at the event, Governor Mimiko said the initiative was in fulfillment of his 2009 inauguration promise to provide efficient service delivery to the people. To him, the continued success of the government’s programmes in different sectors meant that it was essential to better manage, expand, and improve on the planning and execution of the programmes.
Kaadi Igbe Ayo as a concept, he told the gathering, is a project to facilitate sustainable government service delivery to citizens of the state. The project he added, will ensure that integrity, accountability, data collection and reporting, analysis and research will be possible in the planning and execution of benefits and entitlements schemes by government and mechanism for the realisation of the people’s collective dream.
According to the Governor, the gathering was meant to formally introduce what he described as a universally game-changing concept in the fields of democracy, governance and commitment to service.
He added that the overall functional purpose and relevance of the launch lie in the possibility of using the Kaadi Igbe-Ayo as the electronic vehicle to achieve government noble goals.
Mimiko posited that good governance had been found to be the precursor of happiness amongst people. As abstract and intangible as this concept of happiness may be, he stressed, his administration was dedicated to the implementation of critical policies usually associated with the governments of the happiest people on earth, which he said was the promotion of transparent elected democracy and the flourishing of generous welfare benefits-driven economy.
Since its launch last year, the government has been sensitizing the public on the gains and implications on a resident not processing the card, preparatory to its utilisation proper.
Obviously signaling the readiness of government to kick start the operation of the card, the state Commissioner for Information, Hon Kayode Akinmade, last week announced a July 2 take off date after which residents would be expected to provide the card to access some facilities of state.
He said resident parents who want their wards to continue to enjoy the school shuttle scheme and mothers who want to access the Mother and Child hospital facilities as well as those interested in government subsidized agriculture inputs among other social benefits, would only be able to do so from July 2nd if they own the card.
He listed other advantages of the cards to include: facilitation of efficient record keeping, anti-corruption solution in the public service to enable higher level of qualitative and quantitative service delivery in people-oriented sub-sector such as health, education, transportation and agriculture.
Others are facilitating the systematic development of database for efficient security and surveillance purpose, facilitating the use and management of government facilities such as public transportation among others.
He thus implored those who had not obtained their cards to visit the Civic Data Centres in their respective local governments to enable them obtain it before the implementation take off date. He added that over 850,000 residents had so far obtained their residency cards
The Project Coordinator of ‘Kaadi Igbe Ayo’, Mr. Tunde Yadeka, said the card would serve so many functions relating to e-governance.
Giving more details of the card, Yadeka said several pieces of information could be stored in the electronic digital card. Such information, he said include health records of patients, blood group and genotype of individuals, individual bio-data, as well as records of free social services offered by the state government such as fertiliser distribution, immunisation, farm tools distribution, relief materials distribution, free drugs distribution for pregnant women and sick people, among several others.
“The records captured in the card, are readable through electronic card readers,” he said, adding that the records would not only help government get proper information of beneficiaries of its free social and welfare services, but would also help government block leakages in governance.
“The card will check abuse of drugs and fertiliser distribution, by most people who may want to take twice, thereby denying others from getting such free services,” Yadeka said. Although it costs the state government N950 to produce a single card, he however said government had been giving the card to residents free of charge upon registration, insisting that the cards will also serve as an identity to all holders in getting government services.