New National ID Card Is A Scheme To Rip Off Nigerians, Drop It – HURIWA Tells Tinubu

The Human Rights Writers Association (HURIWA) has countered plans by the federal government to issue new national ID cards to Nigerians, describing the scheme as a plot to waste public funds.

HURIWA, in a statement on Sunday, said a report showed that 50 per cent of Nigerians were unbanked and unbankable due to terrible poverty, adding that it was of the view that the plan of a new ID card by the government was part of a sinister plot.

Therefore, it urged the federal government led by President Bola Tinubu to abandon the plan and embrace more beneficial public policies.

HURIWA’s National Coordinator, Emmanuel Onwubiko, in a statement, questioned how 133 million poor Nigerians suffering “crushing poverty” were expected “to maintain working bank accounts to enable them to collect the so-called single National ID”.

The group said, “This is a scheme to rip off Nigeria of monumental and humongous amounts of public funds which will end up in the offshore bank accounts of top leaders and their mistresses and acolytes.

“We call on President Bola Tinubu to discontinue this sheer misuse of both the commonwealth of Nigerians and the plan to once more subject Nigerians to rounds of ordeals of queuing up in the hot sun or rains all over the country in their banks to access their so-called banks to obtain the dubious national identity card even as the Rights group said it is poor thinking for NIMC to assume that all Nigerians have functional bank accounts to enable them get the ID from those banks.”

The group said the new national ID card scheme is a plot by the government and those in the corridors of power to use the public funds to “empower their mistresses, friends and cronies”.

HURIWA, therefore, urged the government to rather adopt the International Passport as the most critical ID card.