Date Published: 12/12/10

Ondo flags off first Residency Card Project in Africa

Ondo State Governor, Dr Olusegun Mimiko at the weekend in Akure flagged off the first-ever Residency Card Project in Africa during which he declared that the project was primarily meant for service delivery management and not for identification.

According to him, the project, which is the first in Africa , was aimed at having reliable and up-to-date data of all residents in the State that would in turn serve as a precursor for effective planning and allocation of scarce government resources.

Governor Mimiko took the lead in the registration exercise as he was registered alongside his Deputy, Alhaji Ali Olanusi and the Speaker of the State House of Assembly, Hon. Samuel Adesina who thus symbolically became the first set of beneficiaries of the scheme.

Already, the State Information Technology Agency (SITA) has enumerated 2,741 towns, hamlets and villages and identified 2,010 centres for the scheme.

The Governor told the gathering that “Registration under the project, also known as KAADI IGBE AYO is voluntary. It will make it possible to collate the information necessary for planning and executing all kinds of people-oriented and welfare projects as contained in the 12-point agenda of this administration."

According to him, the KAADI IGBE AYO " is a dynamic smart card-based solution that will be processed for all residents of Ondo State to serve as interface for all public transaction points within the state. It will allow residents equal access to government’s social and welfare services and let government at every point to monitor the distribution of such services even at the remotest parts of the state.”

The implementation of the project which was a fall-out of the successful completion of the prototype of the field work in Ifedore Local Government, the Governor explained would ensure security of lives and properties, project monitoring and citizens’ feedback, backbone for e-governance as well as transparency and accountability. “Of remarkable importance," Mimiko continued, "is the involvement of State’s Volunteers Corp in the implementation of this scheme. About 20,000 of our youths were registered with the Volunteer Scheme. We are engaging about 5,000 of these volunteers on this project. Let me emphasise that these categories of our work force have been instrumental to the attainment of our various people-oriented programmes.

“Our administration has devoted good time, energy and material resources to the development of Information and Communication Technology. This commitment is predicated on the firm conviction that ICT is the bedrock for development and social transformation in the rapidly changing global environment” the governor remarked.

In his address, the Chairman of the State Information Technology Agency (SITA), Mr Tunde Yadeka fingered lack of reliable data as the bane of development in Nigeria saying that “one of the greatest challenges to development planning is the absence or non-existence of data for planning. The Residency Card Project is designed to avoid the mistakes of the past as far as data management for governance is concerned.

Some of the 4,200 volunteers for the project were presented to the governor at the ceremony.