A group known as the Consolidated Alliance for Grassroots Mobilization CAGram has unveil its membership smart card while promising to register 30 million members on the platform by 2031 and be a decisive voice in the election of the next President of Nigeria.
The unveiling ceremony took place on Thursday in Abuja at the Nicon Luxury hotel.
Speaking during the event, the Executive Secretary of CAGram, Engr. Nwosu Emmanuel Butches said the innovation will further entrench democracy in the country and make politicians more accountable to their constituents particularly by eliminating the phenomenon of vote buying.
Butches said, “Instead of just going to cast your votes or going to sell your vote for a paltry two thousand naira, why not go and cast your votes for Mr A and say our umbrella body will make a demand on your behalf. This innovation makes it possible to know who are our members and how they are voting. It is intended to deepen democracy and make the dividend of democracy reach the grassroot.
“It has just began and it can only but expand across the country. You can see we are gathered here from across the country. Men and women who are real grassroot political heavy weight. What we have done here is to unveil this smart card, we are moving to the next phase where the equipment will go round the country, state by state. We are going to deploy to all the states and we have presence in the states. So the data capture with the production of the card will now take place at state level.
Spesking further Butches said, “After a while we will move down to local government and then ward level. Our target is to have between three million to five million persons on this platform by 2026. To that effect I can tell you that by 2031 we will hit the target of 30 million. We believe that what we are doing with the smart card technology we will deliver the next president of Nigeria in 2031. What we are doing is to compliment what INEC is doing. We are a private initiative, mobilizing the real voters of the grassroot of the grassroot level to encourage them to organize.
On his part, the director general of the National Directorate of Employment (NDE), Mr Silas Agara who was represented by the director, Mr Edmund Onwuri said the agency is inspired by the initiative as it can make it easy in some cases to target its programmes and initiatives to the intended groups and willing participants.
He said, “The NDE under the watch of Mr Silas Agara has hit the ground running. We are glad that Nigerians are thinking and leveraging technology to deal with their problems. The NDE and CAGram are pursuing similar objectives which will make Nigeria a better place.
“Now you are deploying technology that should be able to tell you that you voted, show you who actually voted, so we are gradually leaving the era of conjecture and speculation in electoral outcomes. Nobody would come and say in your ward after you voted and left a wild wind came and things change. You can now verify, you can now confirm that this is what happened at this particular electoral ward.
On her part, the Director General of the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) who was represented by Mr Chima Nwosu who emphasized on the importance of data accuracy and synergy between CAGram and the agency.
She said, ” Data accuracy is very key and that is where NIMC comes into play. We all know that NIMC is established to issue NIN to Nigerians, to identify and enroll Nigerians and to manage data of Nigerians. So I am happy to see this laudable program that is going on. But what we are trying to say is that we look at you as part of our ambassadors.
“Because today we have over 108 million records of registered Nigerians and we know we can do more. And here being the grassroot, because we look at you as the grassroot, because you are going to the grassroot we want you to carry this banner of NIMC, because people need to be identified.
” As you are enrolling peoples and you cannot identify them it becomes the issue that we are having today in Nigeria. We have data, we have people but how are we sure that Mr A is Mr A and Mr B is Mr B. So our doors are open to you, so we can partner, as you are going out there we can actually identify people.