Pan-Yoruba socio-cultural organisation, Afenifere; and ace comedian, Atunyota Akpobome, popularly known as Ali Baba, have both lamented the insistence of the Federal Government to continue with the National Identity Number (NIN) registration despite the ongoing second wave of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19).
Making their positions known in separate fora on Friday, Afenifere and Ali Baba said it is unfair for the government to insist that Nigerians must continue the registration, stating that the health of the citizens must be considered before any policy action.
Speaking in a television programme, Ali Baba, who revealed that he contracted and subsequently recovered from the virus recently, said COVID-19 is real but many Nigerians do not believe in its existence in the country because of a trust deficit on the part of the government.
He noted that the number of Nigerians who could test positive for the virus while jampacked in various registration centres is very high.
“Believability of information from the government is at the lowest ebb right now, especially with the cases of the palliatives that were hidden when people were hungry. Government has not really been in the good books of believability,” Ali Baba said on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily.;
“Then to crown it all, in the face of this second wave, you tell people to do National Identification Number registration and people are packing themselves in places. The number of people that are going to catch Covid and become victims of Covid from going to register will be higher than people who go to the beach or people who throw parties.
“So, you can’t, on one hand, say, Covid is real, maintain social distancing and on the other hand, you say, people have to go and queue for the (NIN) registration.”
The comedian urged the government to either devise other technological means to continue with the exercise currently or hold on till when the pandemic subsides.
“There are ways we can technologically deal with these things. Information technology has gotten to the point that we really do not need to go to a particular point to register.
“It is not now that there is a pandemic that you should insist on that kind of thing. Let the pandemic be over. Whatever it is can be done later. Whatever purpose you want to achieve can be achieved later.
“It is important that people are considered first. But when you say people should start registering for NIN, it means that you are endangering the people,” Ali Baba said.
In a similar vein, Yinka Odumakin, the National Publicity Secretary of Afenifere, in a statement described the continuation of the exercise as a display of total disregard for the lives of citizens by exposing them to the virus without any form of protection.
The pan-Yoruba socio-cultural organisation, urged the Federal Government to deploy technological means to register Nigerians rather than pushing Nigerians to contract the virus.
The statement read: “It is so barbaric and archaic that Nigerians are being exposed to these dangers which shows a lack of critical thinking in leadership when bodies like Google can manage whatever information on people’s phones without having any contact with the owners.
“We challenge the government to respond to the strong allegation by the President of the Association of the Senior Civil Servants of Nigeria (NIMC Unit), Lucky Asekokhai, that already the virus had been detected in three officials of the agency at its headquarters with the government doing a cover-up.”
The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) had asked all telcos to disconnect the SIM cards of persons who have not integrated their NIN with their phone lines by the end of January.
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