The Human Rights Writers Association has urged President Bola Tinubu to halt the plans to issue new National Identity Cards, calling the exercise a conspiracy to defraud Nigerians of public cash and a waste of their commonwealth.

The group argued that the proposal demonstrated a lack of a national strategy for developing and putting into effect advantageous public rules controlling the issuing of IDs.

Emmanuel Onwubiko, the National Coordinator for HURIWA, revealed this in a statement on Sunday.

The Nigerian Interbank Settlement System (NIMC) and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) stated on April 5, 2024, that the NIMC would be collaborating to introduce a new card with many features, including financial and social services.

The commission’s management made it clear that the new ID card would be a single, versatile card rather than three distinct cards in a memo headed “Key Facts About the Proposed New General Multipurpose National Identity Card” that was sent out on Friday.

HURIWA 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.”

HURIWA added that it was of the opinion that the plan was part of a sinister plot by “fast fingers” in the corridors of power to use the public funds to “empower their mistresses, friends and cronies.” A report revealed that 50% of Nigerians were unbanked and unbankable due to extreme poverty.

The organization recommended that the International Passport be used as the primary identity card.