The Director-General of the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), Aliyu Aziz, has argued that the implementation of the Nigeria Identity Number (NIN) project being embarked upon by his organization was the best policy to bring about a national database long clamoured for stakeholders.
Aziz made the disclosure while responding to a question from an eworldnews.com.ng reporter during his presentation at the Association of Licensed Telecom Operators of Nigeria (ALTON) webinar held at the weekend.
He said the NIN project arising from the federal government policy on national data collection, warehousing, and management would eventually end the previous case where several disparate data were housed in silos.
Essential the NIN project was designed to achieve seamless digital identity for all, extend coverage nationwide, reduce cost in data collection, speed up ID delivery, scale-up/out the ID infrastructure for optimal efficiency, harmonize functional identities to the NIN in phases, establish robust security protocols and cybersecurity safeguards and provide dgital ID authentication anywhere anytime, amongst other goals.
According to the DG NIMC has succeeded in harmonising with Bank Verification Number – BVN, and has mandated the use of NIN for passport application and renewal and the use of NIN for JAMB examination registration and sitting.
His speech which focused mainly on the status of the Identity for Development ecosystem project said the federal government has approved N25b to upgrade the critical ID backend infrastructure.
He also said 63.6 million NINs have been successfully generated and issued, 203 Partners licensed as data capture agents/front end partners, over 4,768 Enrolment centers established across the nation and 35 firms onboarded on the authentication/verification platform.
