Liberia: National Identification Registry in Retrospect
Published: 11/Apr/2019
Source: Liberian Observer
By David S. Menjor
What is the National Identification Registry (NIR)? This is one of the questions that take minds back to the days of former President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, when many structures and systems were put in place to optimize the country’s resources, especially its human resource of 4.5 million people.
Whether those structures and systems truly met their reasons for which they were established or not, is left with the public and the government’s partners to narrate.
One of the new agencies created at the time was the National Identification Registry (NIR).
On August 1, 2011, then President Sirleaf signed into law the National Identification Registry Act, which repealed People’s Redemption Council (PRC) Decree #65, establishing the National Identification Card System.
In May, 2012, President Sirleaf established the NIR Board of Registrars.
A National Work Plan for the Registry was on Thursday, October 22, 2015, approved for a nine months at the Ministry of Internal Affairs in Monrovia. This, according to the then Acting Internal Affairs Minister Varney Sirleaf, climaxed a number of key steps that has made the Registry a government fully functional entity.
Varney Sirleaf later became Minister proper, under the leadership of former President Sirleaf and President George Weah allowed him to continue in his role as Internal Affairs Minister.
Former President Sirleaf, having signed into law the National Registry Act on August 1, 2011, appointed J. Tiah Nagbe, former MIA Deputy Minister for Research and Development Planning as executive director, and head of the management team of the NIR.
Read further: https://www.liberianobserver.com/news/national-identification-registry-in-retrospect/