ABUJA—The National Identity Management Commission, NIMC, says N1million fine awaits any organization that denies any Nigerian with National Identity Number, essential services.
The Director General of the Commission, Mr. Aliyu Aziz, disclosed this, yesterday, at a press conference to announce the Fourth annual Government Forum on Electronic Identity in Africa (ID4AFRICA 2018) holding in Abuja.
He said once the enforcement of the harmonized National Identity Number starts the penalty for every transaction that is denied any NIN bearer is N1million and that the person is authorized to report to NIMC for necessary actions.
Although, he did not specify the commencement date, he said almost all the sectors of the economy have been adopting the NIN as the unique identifier.
This he said, is part of the NIMC’s Act, where it is stated that we need the NIN to get the international passport, for banking transactions, insurance, land transactions, voting, driver’s license for SIM registration and all other government services based on regulations.
‘‘Last year we spent time on regulation making sure that the legal framework is very tidy, to also allow all government agencies come in.”
‘‘We have 26 members in harmonization committee, involving, INEC, immigration, FRSC, NHIS, NCC etc.
‘‘We have been harmonizing the BVN records, INEC and NCC data. So far, we have 30m recorded NIN in the data base, without duplication. We have also agreed to work with CBN to make sure all the bank records are included.
‘‘Once we start full enforcement of mandatary use of NIN, every Nigerian that goes to request for any public service and is denied such service by anyone, the fine will be N1m. You can refuse to disclose you’re biometric; all they need is your NIN.
‘‘If they refuse you service, you can report to NIMC and the penalty is N1m for every transaction that they refuse to use the NIN.’’
Just last week the FCT Minister announced that without the NIN, no one will get a plot of land in the FCT.
The NIMC boss noted that the Commission had done well by increasing the NIN enrolment from 5m to 30m but lamented that inadequate funding has remained the major setbacks to the issuance of card and full roll out across the country.
‘‘As I speak, NIMC can only boast of 1,900 out of 65,000 equipment deployed for data capturing because of funding. We are doing data capture and harmonization all from these number of equipment.
‘‘That is why within the next three years, we hope to cover every Nigerian. There was a delay but was because of funding challenge,’’ he added.
In his remarks, the Chairman, ID4Africa, Dr. Joseph Atick said the event has become the biggest identity event in the world and is going to bring the world to Africa to learn identity management practice.
‘‘We have been working for over a year and half now to bring the fourth edition of the annual meeting to be in Nigeria. Africa has become the leader leading the world because the African countries are joining together to share experiences and benefits from each other from advancements they are making.’’
He also said the event is going to herald a petition to the UN with support from the Secretariat of ID4Africa, the board of advisers with representatives from World Bank, NIMC etc to call the UN to recognize September 16 as International Identity Day in recognition of people legal right for identity.
‘‘People in every country of the world have the right to legal identity and the process requires us to get necessary signatures. The important thing is for all nations to recognize that every country has a national identity.’’
On the event proper, the Chairman, Local Organizing Committee, Hadiza Ali-Dagabana, said about 1,500 delegates have registered for the event from 90 countries, 800 from different African countries, while the rest are coming from other countries of the world.
On the benefits, she said the event would offer delegates opportunity to exchange knowledge and ideas, to understand what others have done the mistakes they have been having.
‘‘In Nigeria we started very long time ago, 2003. Then, we deployed 62, 000 equipment nationwide to carry out the exercise but it did not work out well. That is why we said known, it is a continuous process.
The event entitled: Harmonization of identity Scheme, holds in Abuja from 24th -26th April, 2018 in collaboration with NIMC and ID4AFRICA .
ID4AFfrica is multi-stakeholders movement that promotes the transparent and responsible adaptation of digital identity in the service of development in Africa.
It also aims to transform individual expertise and experience into sustainable and collective knowledge for the benefit for the identity community in Africa.
