• Thursday, March 28, 2024
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FG to provide identification for all Nigerians in five years

FG to provide identification for all Nigerians in five years

The Federal Government has stated its determination to provide a lifelong unique identification for every individual physically residing in the country and Nigerians in the diaspora in the next five years.

Aliyu Aziz, Director-General of National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), made this known at the Fifth Annual Meeting of the Identity for Africa (ID4Africa) Movement holding in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Aziz stated that Nigeria needed a unique digital identification platform linked to functional ID registries for accessing services to enhance governance, help its people rise out of poverty, restore growth and participate in the digital economy.

He told the over 1,500 delegates at the 2019 ID4Africa meeting that Nigeria was executing a digital identity ecosystem project endorsed in September 2018 by the Federal Executive Council in realisation of the demands to function in the digital economy for sustainable growth.

While disclosing the grand plan by the government in his paper titled ‘Digital Identity: The Cornerstone to Effective Service Delivery’, Aziz said “the Strategic Roadmap Vision is to reach universal coverage of robust digital identification in Nigeria by applying an ecosystem approach of enrolling citizens of all ages and legal residents within the set timeframe.”

Read Also: 42 million Nigerians already have NIN; NIMC

“The ecosystem approach of enrolment will constitute trusted partners, and a pay-per-play model for successful enrolments. The purpose of the ecosystem approach is to leverage existing capabilities and enrolment facilities of government agencies, partners and private sector operators in Nigeria, as opposed to building new ones,” he added.

He further explained that the ecosystem approach leverages the capacity of all ID stakeholders in the ecosystem to reach full coverage of the target population.

According to the Director-General, some of the stakeholders and partners in the ecosystem approach include the National Population Commission, Nigeria Immigration Service, Federal Inland Revenue Service, Central Bank of Nigeria, National Health Insurance Scheme, National Independent Electoral Commission and the Federal Road Safety Commission.

He said others are the Corporate Affairs Commission, Nigerian Communications Commission, Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, the Nigeria Police Force and the National Pension Commission.

Aziz stated that on January 1, 2019 government began the mandatory enforcement of the use of the National Identification Number (NIN) for such services like application for and issuance of passport, registration of voters, opening of bank accounts, all consumer credit transactions, purchase of insurance policies, transactions with social security implications, all land related transactions, transactions specified under the contributory health insurance scheme, payment of taxes, transactions pertaining to pension, admission into schools and all other relevant government services.

He maintained that there was no option for Nigeria than to embrace and implement digital identity as all modern economic services are done digitally and rely on good identification in order to promote economic growth and opportunities.

Aziz said the benefits of the digital identity ecosystem approach include: to scale up enrolment, extend coverage nationwide, reduce cost in data collection, speed-up delivery, provide digital verification of ID anytime and anywhere in Nigeria.

The NIMC helmsman stressed that a well-developed digital identification programme will help deliver the government’s development agenda and provide for key government services such as safety net, financial inclusion, security and agriculture.