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NIMC to take over BVN, voters’ database

By on October 22, 2015

The Central Bank of Nigeria and the National Identity Management Commission are set to sign a Memorandum of Understanding for the takeover of the Bank Verification Number by the NIMC.

The General Manager, Corporate Communications, NIMC, Mr. Abdulhamid Umar, confirmed this in a telephone interview with our correspondent.

This followed the recent directive by President Muhammadu Buhari that Ministries, Departments and Agencies of the Federal Government should hand over the different databases of Nigerians that they had developed in the course of discharging their mandates to the NIMC, the body mandated by law to manage the identity of Nigerian citizens and residents.

Under the BVN initiated by the CBN, banks operating in the country are required to collect the biometric data of their customers and warehouse the data with the central bank. The deadline for the BVN registration ends on October 31.

Our correspondent learnt that the NIMC had also opened discussions with the Independent National Electoral Commission for the takeover of the voters’ registration database.

Another organisation that is expected to hand over the database of its customers to the NIMC in the new dispensation is the Federal Road Safety Corps.

The database from the registration of telecommunications subscribers initiated by the Nigerian Communications Commission was conceived from the beginning to be managed by the NIMC. However, due to the need to clean up the database, the telecommunications regulatory agency has not been able to hand it over to the NIMC.

Our correspondent learnt that both organisations had opened up fresh talks on the handover following Buhari’s directive.

It is expected that with the integration of the several databases, the country will have a central database that security agencies, credit agencies and other important stakeholders can refer to whenever they want to authenticate the identity of any individual.

Central in the new identity being promoted by the NIMC is the National Identity Number, a number unique to every individual on the database, which the commission claims to be more important than the national identity card that it has started issuing.

On the capacity of the NIMC to manage the disparate databases from different agencies, Umar said it had since acquired the capacity to warehouse and manage a database for 200 million people.

The Federal Government had in 2001 awarded a contract worth $214m to a consortium led by a French firm, Sagem, for the production of identity cards for all Nigerian citizens.

The contract was marred in 2003 by allegations that Nigerian officials collected more than $2m in bribes to influence its award.

 

[Punch]