The new national identity card will replace the current voters card after the 2015 general elections, the National Identity Management Commission, NIMC, has said.

The director of technical services at the commission, Emma Ogungbe, said on Thurday that the identity card would enhance the integrity of the electoral process.

He said that with the new identity card, NIMC could give the details of every eligible voter from a particular local government area, senatorial district or state in Nigeria.

Explaining the process further, he said: “During election, you go to a polling booth, you get in there, what you do is carry your ID card with you, they check your name against what NIMC is giving them, tick it and you vote.”

He said with this new method, there would be no need for ad hoc registration by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, and that monies saved can be channelled to other purposes.

“A time will come if government says NIMC, give me details of everyone in Lagos State, ages 18 and above, we will give it to them because they’ve already been in our database and it’s been sanitised, we know they are who they say they are. It will be a seamless operation,” he said.

Ogungbe assured Nigerians that the new national ID card would put a permanent end to cases of election rigging including double or multiple registrations or voting, as he noted that “the new card is error-proof”.