Just as relevant associations and agencies in the Information and Technology (IT) sector are clamouring for Subscribers Identity Module(SIM) registration, Nigeria would soon be calling for the harmonization of all identity cards of its citizenry.

In the nearest future, every ID card irrespective of the organisation or agency that issued it would be harmonized just like the Social Insurance Security number, which is a unique identification number for every citizen in Europe. Similarly, ID cards like driver’s licence, National ID card, National Pension Commission cards (PENCOM) and others would be conbined into one ID card.

According to Daily Sun’s source who spoke under anonymity, the harmonization is basically to pave way for a new identification number that would be unique to each individual as well as be a preventive measure against fraud and other miscellaneous offences.

The idea of documenting the identity of Nigerians and non-citizens in terms of biographic data has been a major source of concern to government dating back to the early years after independence. Although no significant efforts were made during the colonial era, for obvious reasons, the first major effort aside from population census exercises, was heralded or initiated in 1978 by the then military government. In the following year, Decree 51 was promulgated, establishing the Department of National Civic Registration (DNCR) charged with the responsibility of implementing the programme.

The programme was basically to register all citizens of Nigeria who at the commencement of the Decree have attained or who thereafter will attain age of 18, and issue to every person so registered, a National Identity Card (NIC). Government’s primary objective was to use the programme as an effective tool of control of illegal immigrants in the country, validation of other civic documents such as the travelling passports, setting up a reliable personal identification system for the purpose of securing commercial transactions with financial institutions.

“In February this year, the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) appointed a consortium of SageMetrics and Advanced Management Technologies Ltd. to conduct its Harmonisation Assessment Study (HAS); a project central to NIMC’s task of harmonising and integrating the identity databases of government agencies as provided in the NIMC Act 23, of 2007.

“The project was completed in three months and it served as an important input to the work of the Harmonisation and Integration Committee that was constituted by the commission,” the source said.
He disclosed that the consortium, had a member of the former President Bush’s National Identity Assurance ICT Committee, Mr. Ken Nwabueze, and a member of the Yar’Adua’s presidential implementation committee on political reform, Dr. Steve Dike, as technical partners/consultants. They conducted the study, which was supported by NIMC work groups, that was also made up of largely engineers and systems analysts in the Identity Database Department of the commission.

The primary objective of the study was to ascertain the differences and gaps in processes and procedures towards developing a harmonisation and integration policy that would help put in place a unified and codified set of processes and procedures for data collection and management. This is an essential precondition for the development of a shared platform that will enable the agencies optimise the use of their access to the National Identity Database and enhance service delivery.

NIMC recently announced that it had commenced the development of a fibre optic access link to more than 14 government agencies and its state offices preparatory to providing access to the institutions and also eliminating sources of human errors; a major source of concern in the previous efforts at registering Nigerians for the harmonization scheme.

The head of management team, Chris Onyemenam, noted that the NIMC was pleased with the pace of work. While adding that with the steady progress in the implementation of the contract for the creation of the fibre optic link to the institutions, NIMC was poised to enhance service delivery across government agencies when the Verification Infrastructure System is eventually made available on schedule.

The NIMC Act, which in Section 32(1) of 2007 provides for the repeal of the National Civic Registration Act also provides for the introduction of a chip based technology-the General Multi-Purpose Card (GMPC). And incorporating unique process of registration and enrolment of demographic and biometric data of registrable persons under the Act towards the establishment of a national identity database, harmonization and integration of the existing identification databases in government agencies and issuance of unique personal identification numbers.

IT analysts in Nigeria have lauded the initiative but as stakeholders, they all wondered if harmonization of ID cards in Nigeria would work effectively, the way it was known to have succeeded in European countries.

Opebi Adeyinka stressed that it may go down the drain, owing to the Nigerian factors but if the government was serious about it, apart from serving as fraud checkers, it is used mostly to claim certain social benefits from the government, among other things, through the individual’s unique number.