FG policies and the burden of citizens’ multiple data registration in Nigeria
By Tony Nwakaegho
The registration process of citizens in Nigeria is as old as the citizens because it was initiated from the registration at birth and christened as ‘Birth Certificate’. The process has since been enlarged as a result of the country’s population and the exponential growth being witnessed after over a century that the Nigeria’s telecommunication sector was partially and fully liberalized in 1992 and 1999 respectively.
Since the National Identification Management Commission (NIMC) evolved, Section 18 of the 2017 NIMC Act, which was approved 13 years ago, directed each citizen to obtain a National Identity Number (NIN), but there was not enough awareness.
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) also came up with the Bank Verification Number (BVN) initiative for bank account holders, while other organizations, Ministries Departments and Agencies, (MDAs) always demand for national identity card, voters’ card, international passport among others for purposes of documentations.
On Tuesday, 1 August, 2017, the Federal
Government in line with the one
e-government initiative announced plans to harmonize the database of the NIMC and that of the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) to improve the ease of doing business.
According to the Agencies, the National Identity Database would help the government plan and better implement people-oriented policies, help security agencies nip crimes in the bud, help law enforcement and intelligence agencies to better tackle terrorism and enable a seamless rollout of development initiatives for the mass of the people.
The emergence of the current Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Dr Isa Pantami eventually changed the narrative as he saw to the transfer of NIMC to his ministry, where he gave a marching order to the DG NIMC, Engr Aliyu Aziz to register at least 1.2million Nigerians monthly.
Pantami, however, came up with linking phone numbers to NIN with a view to linking same to the telecos Subscribers Identity Module (SIM) card on their networks as well as harmonise all of these into a single database.
According to him, National Identity Database would help the government plan and better implement people-oriented policies, help security agencies nip crimes in the bud, help law enforcement and intelligence agencies to better tackle terrorism and enable a seamless rollout of development initiatives for the mass of the people.
Investigation by Gentechnews has shown that in this smartphone and digital age, the NIMC did not carry out enough awareness on the exercise and this has impacted on millions of Nigerians in villages and hamlets who didn’t even know what was going on.
What followed the directive was mass hysteria, and a rush that saw millions of Nigerians besiege NIMC offices across the country in the middle of a global second round of pandemic.
The Minister blamed the lethargic approach of Nigerians for the huge crowds that besieged the National Identification Number centres across the country and wondered why a great number of Nigerians have failed to comply to obtain NIN which was approved 13 years ago.
What appear to be a novel idea and a decent government policy, has been embroiled in controversies as NIMC announced that electronically generating NIN through BVN (Bank Verification Number) no longer matters as holders of such NIN have to go and register for another one.
The process has also been enmeshed in corrupt practices and people pay to get the NIN in some locations. In all these, what is paramount is whether NIMC is ready to provide an operational central database that would provide useful information for planning at national and local levels and whether the issue of getting to provide all these information during documentation could be harness with a click of a button and without challenges such a power failure that has been prevalent in the country.
It is pertinent for NIMC to work out data sharing agreements with all stakeholders – MDAs, banks, telecommunications, hospitals, Police, FRSC Nigeria Custom Service, Nigeria Immigration Service, etc and ensure it is not exposed to unnecessary litigation resulting from breach of customers’ data because many consultants who have been engaged for the exercise could be compromised with the customers’ data.
It will be recalled that many government websites in Nigeria during the #EndSAR were attacked by hackers and so no system is completely foolproof these days.
It appears that there is no end in sight yet over the use of NIN for the purpose of documentation as the government at times undertake initiatives that have no legislative backing that bring litigations to government like the freezing of the #End SAR account that has been upturned by a court of competent jurisdiction.
The Minister for Communications and Digital Economy, Dr. Isa Pantami, has just revealed plans by the Federal Government to replace the Bank Verification Number (BVN) with the National Identity Number (NIN).
Pantami, after making a presentation to the National Economic Sustainability Committee said that the Ministry is collaborating with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to ensure citizens with BVNs are automatically provided with NINs.
According to him, the two establishments had been working on the initiative, with the CBN having more workload to facilitate the process, in order to make it much easier for Nigerians.
The Minister announced that the challenge is that the BVN records may not be 100 per cent the same as the NIN, but what is most important is that the NIN is the primary identity of every legal resident in the country.
Pantami said “BVN is a policy of a bank and has not been established by law. The NIMC Act 2007 provides that all our citizens must enrol and the law gives them 60 days to enrol from the time the law was enacted and a maximum of 180 days.
“All permanent residents in the country and legal residents that have to stay here for a minimum of 24 months must enrol so that the primary identification of all and all other databases are supposed to utilise this and not for NIN to utilise the BVN because it is the primary one.
“Some of the challenges encountered, NIMC produced the template for registering citizens in passport, BVN and others but some institutions did not comply with the requirements. Even in biometrics, some will just take four, some two, so you cannot harmonise without upgrading and integrating the system.”
It will be recalled that the Federal Government had directed that telecommunication companies should block from their networks, any SIM that was not registered with valid NINs with effect from December 30, 2020.
However, following public outcry, the government gave six weeks’ extension to subscribers without NIN from December 30, 2020, to February 9, 2021, and three weeks’ extension for subscribers with NIN from December 30, 2020, to January 19, 2020.
This was further extended by eight weeks with April 6, 2021, as the new deadline.
David Ubani, a public commentator has maintained that the NIN registration process and linking NIN to phone numbers should be continuous, seamless and painless because people that are not yet born will still buy phones and have the SIMs registered.
He opined that there is a huge burden on those octogenarians and septuagenarians in the rural area who cannot make themselves available for such enrollment, stressing that government has no options than to visit such aged citizens from the comfort of their home to register them and link NIN to their networks.
“Government policies do not entail continuity as another government will come and change the initiative that is unfriendly,” Ubani added.