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The Nigerian government has announced a new condition of service and salary scale for staff of the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) that significantly increased the total personnel cost of the organization by over 200%.
The new annual salary scale has increased from N5 billion to N16.7 billion, said Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Dr. Isa Ali Ibrahim Pantami, while formally presenting the two approved documents on new salary scale and improved conditions of service to the board and management team of NIMC in Abuja.
‘‘One of the major challenges I came across in the supervision of the NIMC was the poor working condition of the staff. Since the inception of NIMC in 2007, multiple attempts have been made to change the narrative of the staff emoluments without success. The process towards achieving a functional condition of service for the Commission has been a long and daunting task that commenced since 2010,” said Pantami adding that the two documents have ignited the process to make NIMC a more functional organisation.
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Acting Chairman of NIMC Governing Board, Mallam Bello Ibrahim Gwandu disclosed that the new development ends the over a decade struggle to improve the working conditions in NIMC.
His words: “since 2010 we have been galvanizing efforts to ensure a positive change in the fortunes of NIMC’s workforce, but each time we take one successful step forward, there appears to be multiple gridlocks impeding our pace, All of these changed for the better upon the assumption of Professor Pantami as the supervisory minister of NIMC. Evidence abounds of his persistent push and resilient resolve to accelerate us to this remarkable phase. We couldn’t have asked for a better Minister.”
Pantami stressed that the new service condition and salary scale was as a result of the persistence and most importantly, the support of President Mohammadu Buhari following series of meetings with the President, Attorney General and Minister of Justice of the Federation, the Minister of Finance, and the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation amongst others.
Director General of NIMC, Mr. Aliyu Abdullaziz, while expressing the profound gratitude of the commission that ‘Professor Pantami has achieved in less than a year, what previous administrations tried unsuccessfully to achieve in over a decade”.
For Pantami, getting NIMC to play its strategic role effectively as a national digital identity agency would require empowering the staff with adequate emoluments and better working conditions.
His words: “Following the completion of the transfer of the supervision of NIMC to the ministry of communications and digital economy in October 2020, it became my responsibility to oversee and supervise the affairs of the commission. My first task was to undertake due diligence and a review process of the NIMC’s human capital needs and technical audit to ascertain their progress as well as challenges.
‘‘I compared the NIMC personnel policy with what we have in other parastatals under the communications and digital economy ministry and found out NIMC has the poorest staff remuneration scheme with a highly sensitive mandate to deliver. Thus, the staff remuneration existing then was not commensurate to the work delivery expected from the commission.
“As it is today, your annual salary scale is N5billion to be paid to over N4,000 staff of NIMC. But with this approval, the salary has been catapulted to reach 16.7 billion. That is an increase of 11.7b billion.”
