nairaland.net

If there is any government scheme that has made Nigerians to lose faith in government programmes and policies, the National Identity Card Scheme is one perfect example. This was a scheme that was begun in 1978 by the then Gen Olusegun Obasanjo military regime. The scheme had barely taken off when he handed over power to the civilian administration of Shehu Shagari. Right from then, the scheme was subjected to prolonged and inexplicable bureaucratic complications, so much so that it appeared jinxed. Subsequent administrations gyrated around the project but were never able to get it off the ground. Indeed, the scheme soon became a staple feature in the nation's budget as it always got a large chunk of annual budgetary figures of the internal affairs ministry. In time, it became the honey pot of the ministry from where most internal affairs ministers feted themselves and the ministry's bureaucrats. The scheme verily brought the ministry into wild scandals of corruption. The late Sunday Afolabi, former Internal Affairs minister, and some other bureaucrats were undergoing prosecution for the alleged fraud committed with the ID card scheme, when he (Afolabi) died last year.

It took the return of Obasanjo, 21 years after...
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