Law on side of Pantami over replacing BVN with NIN

The plan to replace the Biometric Verification Number (BVN) with the National Identification Number (NIN) by the Minister of Communication and Digital Economy, Isa Ali Pantami may have the force of law, experts say.

The Minister had on Monday while interacting with journalists said after making a presentation to the National Economic Sustainability Committee, he had drawn the attention of the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) on the need to replace BVN with NIN.

In explaining his position, Pantami said the BVN is a policy of a bank and has not been established by law, whereas the NIMC Act 2007 provides that all Nigerian citizens must enroll for the NIN within 60 days 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 enroll 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,” Pantami said. “Some of the challenges encountered, NIMC produced the template for registering citizens in the passport. Even in biometrics, some will just take four, some two, so you cannot harmonise without upgrading and integrating the system.”

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Some experts agree with Pantami. Enyioma Madubuike, legal advisor, Korapay says the NIMC Act creates the legal foundation for the NIN as the mandatory number for any Nigerian citizen.

“The BVN is an initiative of the Central Bank to ensure that users in the financial sector can be identified and monitored.

The CBN introduced centralised Bank Verification System and Banking Verification Number into the banking sector in February 2014. It was designed to clearly define the roles and responsibilities of stakeholders; to clearly define the operations of the BVN in Nigeria; to define access, usage, and management of the BVN information, requirements, and conditions; to provide a database of watch-listed individuals; to outline the process and operations of the watch-list, and; to deter fraud incidences in the Nigerian banking industry.

Olusola Teniola, Nigeria National Coordinator for Alliance for Affordable Internet, said the minister is correct that the NIN should be the primary identity to be used by the banking sector and presumably across other sectors.

“Though the emphasis should be on harmonisation and not a replacement. It is far better to decentralise information and then map on a per case-by-case basis for improved flexibility and effectiveness in a complex system environment,” Teniola said.

Samuel Ireke, a legal expert and founder of Law Nigeria said the goal of the BVN from the beginning was to deliver something approximately to what they call Social Security Number abroad. This means one number that defines the socio-economic existence of any citizen or resident vis-a-vis the government.

“The BVN was merely a more robust, encompassing but transition platform towards that goal when compared with older devices like the driving licence (for only people who drive a motor vehicle) or international passport (which captures more Nigerians in the diaspora than it does Nigerians at home besides those who travel abroad or who plan to travel) or TIN (which is for tax-payers, a club that still excludes a large segment of Nigeria). I was also relatively successful because it horned into the goal of reducing fraud in the financial system through identity manipulations owing to the lack of data against which to verify identity claims (something that NIN would have solved if it existed),” Ireke said.

While the law is on the side of the minister, some experts say the minister needs to approach the issue differently.

“The Minister and the CBN Governor work for the same government. They should talk to each other, and while at that, make sure they plug existing loopholes including the proper legal framework for mass biometric registration in Nigeria,” Gbenga Sesan, executive director of Paradigm Initiative, a pan-African social enterprise working on digital inclusion and digital rights, told BusinessDay.