BY BRIGHT JACOB
On its website, the Lagos State Residents Registration Agency, an organisation saddled with the responsibility of registering residents and those who plan to live in the state for more than two consecutive months, declares it is the need to integrate the residents of Lagos State into e-government initiatives to enable the services provided by government to be fully utilised and also provide an accurate picture for government policy and planning, as central reasons for its establishment.
Yet, 11 years after its Residents Registration Agency Bill was passed and signed into law on June 27, 2011, LASRRA has seemingly struggled to optimize its digital potential.
The agency, which has at the helm of affairs a female Engineer, Ibilola Kasunmu, as its current General Manager, started with “ordinary plastic cards” which acted only as a means of identification for bonafide residents duly registered and on the State’s database.
However, on Wednesday July 20, 2022, the State Government decided to change the narrative after it relaunched its Lagos Residency Card, a multipurpose smart card with 28 applets that make the provision of 28 services possible to the cardholders.
In a press statement by Gboyega Akosile, Chief Press Secretary to the Governor, the move by the state to generate a comprehensive database of all persons residing in the State had moved a notch higher with the launch of “an upgraded and chip embedded smart residency card by LASRRA.”
The Governor of Lagos State, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, according to the statement, personally unveiled the Smart Residency Card at launching events held simultaneously across five locations in the State, namely Ikeja, Lagos Island, Badagry, Ikorodu and Epe.
In celebration of the upgrade, Sanwo-Olu, who was symbolically presented with the card, said it was a smart, multipurpose ID that “combines biometric identification with other benefits, such as security, financial services, transportation and access to Government services and amenities.”
According to him, “Today’s relaunch is borne out of the need to embrace change and align with global best practices. We have upgraded the residency card from an ordinary plastic card, for identification purposes only, to a smart, multi-purpose card that combines biometric identification with other functionalities and benefits that cuts across areas such as security, financial services, mobility and access to government services and amenities.
“Lagos experiences significant levels of daily inbound migration of people seeking economic opportunities and a better life. As a result, our population is rising rapidly, with obvious implications for social services, social infrastructure, and for security. It has become imperative for the State Government to re-examine strategies aimed at improving the security of lives and properties of the people.
“This smart residency card being launched today will help us to address the issues surrounding the identification and traceability of Lagos residents, and ultimately help inform the Government’s planning and provision of services designed to secure lives and property. The card comes with an electronic wallet, which can hold funds and be used for daily transactions to support the cashless agenda of the monetary authorities.”
The State Government also declared it already has 6.5m residents who are enrolled on LASRRA’s database, with registration figures increasing “four-fold” in the last three years. It added it would be targeting to capture 10m residents on the database before the end of the year.
The Government further revealed that henceforth new visitors to the State who plan to stay in the State for more than two consecutive months are now required to register for the residency card.
The Special Adviser to the Governor on Innovation and Technology, Olatunbosun Alake, while stating that the Smart Residency Card was crucial to the Government’s Smart City Project, detailed the ease with which information could be seamlessly updated because of “the new elastic and expandable biometric interfaces.”
“We have a cloud redundancy system that allows 24 hours operations and a highly rated machine accuracy system. It has back-end cloud workload protection and two-factor authentication to make changes to the information originally supplied, such as a physical address,” Alake said.
On her part, LASRRA GM, Kasunmu, said the challenges notwithstanding, the agency was buoyed by its resolve to contribute to the overall vision of the present Government by finding innovative ways to improve the efficiency of governance and service delivery for the benefit of the people, and the State couldn’t lag behind in the age of global digitization.
“We took account of certain limitations inherent in the initiative, developed an ecosystem framework with propositions to include a cost-effective approach to produce the smart ID cards for residents,” Kasunmu said.
“The whole of the exercise is like an unnecessary duplication of effort. What’s the essence of having a National Identity Card, and now you have to have the one that says you are resident in Lagos?”
“We are glad to announce that we have been able to secure the partnership of several private sector players on this laudable project as we needed to ensure the card remained free to the residents of the State. Residents are not expected to pay for the card,” she added.
Sharing his thoughts on the launch of the new smart card by the Lagos State Government, a senior lawyer, Fred Aigbadumah, gave knocks to the state government for having a penchant for undertaking “utopian” and “white elephant” projects.
According to him, such projects are not people-oriented.
Though he lauded the idea behind the official launching of the card, he maintained it was an “unnecessary duplication” as other schemes like the National Identify Number, Bank Verification Number, driver’s license, Permanent Voters’ Card and even National Population Commission’s census figures, could be used to address the reasons adduced by the LASG for the use of the smart card.
Aigbadumah said, “When you look at the nature of road construction they’re doing…though we give kudos to them compared to Ogun State…most of the projects are not people-oriented projects. They’re what you call utopian and white elephant projects.
“And I can assure you that the target is not the masses. They’ve never been mass-oriented in all the projects on their programmes, especially under this regime.
“To a large extent, it’s a welcome development having a single card that incorporates everything, but it’s unnecessary duplication.
“You have NIN (National), you have Permanent Voter’s Card (National), you have your Nigerian passport and driver’s license for some of us who drive and apply for it.
“The whole of the exercise is like an unnecessary duplication of effort. What’s the essence of having a National Identity Card, and now you have to have the one that says you are resident in Lagos?
“The essence of that (smart card) is still a bit questionable, but nonetheless if it’s for the purpose of development projects and agenda for the people, I think it would be a salutary one and is highly welcomed,” he added.
Aigbadumah further explained that he applauds the government for stating that registration and issuing of the card was free, but doubts their sincerity in that regard, calling to mind the difficulty associated with obtaining the NIN and PVC.
He also said he hoped the card would not be something renewable, except for loss, theft or mutilation.
In his opinion, anything outside of that would mean it was another “revenue generating agenda” of the government.
“It is welcoming to know it is free, but I still doubt how free it will be. We all know the national ID card that was supposed to be free….you know how you struggled to get it, even the PVC.
“And I hope it will not be something renewable but will be once given and you have it, except there will be any development on that person’s part…maybe in the case of loss or getting stolen or mutilated or anything else happens to it.
“Otherwise, it will be another revenue generating agenda (of the government),” he submitted.
Asked whether Lagos was fully ripe for such smart cards, the legal luminary disclosed he wouldn’t say the contrary was the case in the state, since “we are talking about a card of that nature that is good and helps in a lot of ways.”
He said he begged to differ on the 10 million residents for enrollment the state earmarked to be the target of those who would obtain the card before the end of this year.
“The question of not being ripe should not arise, but it’s going to be a few (residents) because it is not everybody that understands the essence or want to relate with any government agency or any department or ministry, on that basis,” he said.
Regarding one of the functions of the smart card being able to be used to identify and trace Lagos residents, the learned lawyer said, “Traceability to where? Traceability from where? For what?
“Let me let you know, even the so-called NIN they’re doing because of the insecurity issue…those that are killing, those that are maiming, those that are serious threat to security…they’re still having a field day, notwithstanding the national ID card, BVN or harmonizing your BVN with your account, as well as NIN with your phone number.
“They’re still carrying on with impunity, nobody is questioning them, nobody is even confronting them. So, I don’t know what they’re qualifying for.”
Aigbadumah also contended that the card would not be for welfare purposes as the government had tried to paint it, as there was nothing like a “welfare package” in Nigeria.
He said the Covid-19 welfare packages that were meant to benefit Nigerians were stashed away, and it was after about eight months into the lockdown that “we discovered that a lot of palliatives for the Covid-19 welfare packages that were supposed to be for the masses ended up in some warehouses.”
