Sixteen months after a Presidential directive for the harmonisation of Nigeria’s biometric data scattered across different agencies, efforts are stalled by lack of funds, data management authorities disclose.
Director-general, National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), Aliyu Aziz, said despite reviewing the budget for the harmonisation project from N20 billion to N5 billion, the funds were yet to come in.
Nigeria has multiple identity management system with the banks issuing out Bank Verification Number (BVN), Sim card registration carried out by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), voter’s registration by Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), school registration done at various local government areas (LGAs), birth registration by National Population Commission (NPC), international passport by Nigerian Immigration Service and drivers licence jointly issued by the Vehicles Inspection Officers (VIO) and Federal Road Safety Corps.
The cost implications of having different agencies for carrying these registrations have been sounded out by the government as unrealistic and no longer sustainable.
After receiving a briefing from the head of the commission and its commissioners, President Muhammadu Buhari had in August last year issued a directive for the harmonisation of biometric data from the different collating agencies.
However, speaking at a policy roundtable meeting on Identity Management organised by NIMC in collaboration with the World Bank at the State House Conference Centre, Presidential Villa Abuja on Thursday, Aziz said “as at February 2015, when we worked out for all the agencies we found that we required close to N20 billion to carry out harmonisation.
“Of course, you know that now there is no budget and we are in recession, so we were asked to modify it and we picked only the major ones like INEC, NCC. The BNV is ongoing because CBN paid for that to happen and we came down to N5 billion that is needed for harmonisation, but still there is no budget.”
Meanwhile, a total of N6,198,441,627 was budgeted for the commission in the 2016 spending plan. A breakdown showed that N4,854,681,244 was approved for personnel, N398,760,383 for overhead, N5,253,441,627 for recurrent and N945,000,000 for capital projects.
The capital vote is shared among renovation of registration centres in states, awareness and public enlightenment campaigns, logistics support, upgrade and update of national identity database and facilities, development of direct access to national identity database as well as biometric capturing and issuance of national identity cards.
At the policy roundtable, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, who was represented by the deputy chief of staff, Ade Ipaye, said it was no longer possible for the government to maintain the cost of duplications of biometrics collection in the face of the country’s scare resources.
“The fiscal cost of implementing disparate and unconnected biometrics linked data bases is increasingly becoming a huge burden and needs to be streamlined going forward, as government cannot continue to fund the unnecessary duplication of efforts and overlapping identity functions that further deplete it is scarce resources,” Osinbajo said.
He stressed that as the entity management system challenges were being resolved, other forms of identification such as driver’s licence, international passports must be aligned.
“The development of identity programmes in Nigeria will greatly help the nation leverage on its potentials to improve security of lives and properties, advance service delivery and fight poverty and corruption. Achieving full-scale national identity management will therefore boost our efforts at better tracking the movement of people while minimising issues with external border controls and terrorism,” Osinbajo said.
Country director Nigeria of World Bank, Rachid Benmessaoud, represented by Indira Konjhodzic, in his remarks, said about 1.5 billion people (most of whom were internally displaced, refugees, entrepreneurs, etc) worldwide were with no formal prove of identity at the moment.
Benmessaoud said the ID management would help the social intervention programme of the Nigerian government and enable them reach the poor and the marginalised. The harmonisation, he said, would also bridge the gap of close to 50 percent Nigerians that are not banked.
On the other hand, chairman, Federal Inland Revenue Service, Babatunde Fowler, in his remarks, said the harmonisation of identity management would capture the about 40 million Nigerian workers not registered as tax payers and would generate more funds for the government.
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