Recognising the importance of having an identity database for its sustenance and development, Nigeria established the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) in 2007 with the mandate to create, manage, maintain and operate the country’s National Identity Database. At this critical time in global affairs where security challenges limit resources and hamper growth, government’s will power to fully fund NIMC for it to function properly and deliver on its mandate can unlock the undiscovered treasure in identity as national asset. In this interview, Director-General/Chief Executive Officer of NIMC, Engr. ALIYU ABUBAKAR AZIZ spoke with MKPE ABANG on the agency’s unrelenting efforts to fulfil its mandate, among other issues. Excerpts:
Congratulations on your first anniversary, having been appointed on November 23, 2015. I believed that you have settled down fully for the challenges of this assignment. What was your immediate reaction when your name was mentioned by President Muhammadu Buhari to take over this assignment?
Can I really remember my reaction? Well, may be when I told people that I have been appointed, I remember what the people said, more than myself, people mentioned that what you sow is what you reap; they may be referring to the fact that I have always been in this new National Identity Management System way back from the time of the Presidential Committee for Harmonisation of Identity Management System. So, I felt that I was capable and I had the thinking that the environment was still the same. But when I took over the mantle, I found out that the environment was no longer the same as before. So, that has been the major challenge. I can say that I felt elated about the appointment and I believe that I will be able to make great changes and that this appointment is like a stepping stone for other future appointments.
Having taken up the responsibility, can you pinpoint for us, within the first one year in office, what you will say has been the highpoint of your duty here, I mean your achievements so far?
Well, because of the environment, as I said, I found out that I inherited a budget that is like only two per cent of our requirement, therefore the strategy was that we focus on our core function and that core function is registration and that is where we have gotten some achievements. At the time that I came in, it was approximately seven million record and my vision then was to multiply that seven by 10, which I called ‘10 X’ by the end of December this year. But so far, it is more looking like we may likely multiply by only two and not 10 as envisaged because of the lack of adequate resources to do that.
When you say adequate resources, are you referring to human resources or financial resources?
Actually we have human resources but we don’t have enough equipment and also we don’t have the financial strength for logistics needed to be able to meet that initial projection; but we have human capacity to carry out the activities.
From your own understanding of identity, what would you say is the importance of identity, for those who may not know?
Well, I will say that identity is perhaps the most important aspect in any country’s socio-political life; identity is important in budget, security and also in planning. Those three things are very important for every nation. Every year, we carry out budget activities and without using the actual number of people that we know, there is growing distrust among citizens and residents. And also most of the commercial activities today are now e-commerce, e-business; so you need electronic identification system really to build on such kind of payment system. And for planning purpose too, we have been planning without proper record. So, identity will help us in those three major areas to fight corruption; fight terrorism; and also enable a trustworthy system of governance.
When you hear people say that Nigeria has now reached 180 million or a little bit above, and these figures are given to us by either United Nations or other international agency, what is your immediate reaction to that?
The point is that we have a very large population and also our birth rate too is growing. In fact, my estimation before was that we were adding 5.5 million babies every year; but when UNICEF came here, they corrected me that actually, currently, we are adding seven million children to our population every year. So, it is really growing, especially, when you go to the rural areas or markets, you see a large number of people. And since you need to carry out financial activities electronically, so it definitely means that we require identity management system to be up to speed in today’s world. We are really a large population, whether it reaches that figure or not does not matter; what we should work towards is to register everybody without leaving out anybody and that would really help us and with that, we will be planning for the next 100 years, not even five years planning that we have been talking about.
Talking about registering everybody, what are the strategies that you think NIMC can adopt in ensuring that each state is duly registered into the system?
Currently, the strategy is to collaborate with state governments, local governments and also to collaborate with our sister federal agencies, especially, to harmonise the existing databases and also to go out together whenever we are going to capture again. The era of working alone capturing data by agencies is over; now we have to go out together. If National Population Commission is going out for Census, they should go out with NIMC to also capture the biometrics of the individuals so that we don’t do it twice. If INEC (Independent National Electoral Commission) is going to do registration for voters, again, we need to go out and do it together and then other existing small databases have to then harmonise with the National Identity Management System so that we can reduce cost and also eliminate the duplicates and ghosts that have been existing in most of the systems that we have.
Talking about duplication, today we have almost every major government agency, from the telecom regulator to the immigration to the banking system, each one having biometric database of everybody who uses their system; what would be your advice to the government or to the industry for us to have a unified biometric system?
Already, Mr President himself has spoken and he has directed that all these separate databases must be harmonised. And in fact, the Vice President has been spearheading this since December last year and we have had several meetings and also been talking to all those other agencies that it is high time we commenced this harmonisation and integration. So far, the CBN (Central Bank of Nigeria) Governor has given instruction for the BVN database to be harmonised with that of the NIMC and that has been going on steadily. On the SIM register also, the Executive Vice Chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission has agreed to pass the database of all SIMs registered to us so that we can harmonise it with the national identity management system. Similarly with other agencies, since we now have price of oil falling in the international market, finances have been affected and I think it has now made other agencies to start thinking differently. Before, vendors can go to agencies and tell them not to worry about NIMC and carry out their own activity, but that was when there was money; right now, there is no money. The Ministry of Finance will not allow any agency to spend any money like that. The Ministry of Budget and National Planning will also not allow for such different databases to be captured again. So, all of us need to work together to achieve the main objectives.
Now tell us, if all these splintered databases are all brought together to be housed by NIMC, do you have enough robust system, well secured to be able to handle this?
We have a robust system. We have built standard system and we have high throughput equipment. We have certifications from ISO and other agencies to make sure that all the processes that we do are world class standards. We have engineers and professionals in that field of managing database and we also have the storage to do that as well as data recovery site. So, in terms of technical capacity, we have it; probably we may need more assistance in logistics and the rest of it, but in terms of capacity, NIMC has it and that has been attested to by all Committees in the National Assembly that have been visiting our data centre to see what we really have. So, we are capable of doing that.
Okay, talking about the National Assembly and going back to the issue of central database, would you for instance, support a possibility of the National Assembly having a law that ensures that there is no other body or institution holding a database but NIMC?
Well, in terms of law, already, the law that we have covers everything. It covers registration from birth to death by NIMC and it has covered a compulsory and mandatory usage of NIMC. That has been in the Act that we have now, so the law is there; but in Nigeria, enforcement of the law has always been the difficulty and mind you, the board of NIMC is also made up of all these other agencies that are also capturing data. The whole idea is to harmonise, to reduce cost of government activities and also allow the data to be used electronically to authenticate people that are carrying out transactions online and the rest of it.
Let me talk about people in the rural areas and those in not very urban areas, they may not be very familiar with the importance of having a specific National Identity Number which is issued by NIMC; can you advise people what this number is all about?
I think sometimes they say when you have some kind of difficulty, then it becomes a lesson. So for people like from my own zone, North East zone, where we have this unfortunate terrorism activities, everybody is now aware of the need to really have a government document, whether it is in form of paper or in form of card because the security situation there is so hard and it is only in Nigeria that you can just remain and do your activities without having any form of identification. All over the world, be it in terms of paper or in any other form, you must have some form of identification and it has to be verified. So, it is very important, as I said, for security and it is also very important for national planning and budgeting. So, I believe that even the local people will now know that it is very important to have some form of identification and it is useful. So far, we have been breaking the law, like if you don’t have the identification number and you go and open a bank account, you are actually doing something against the law. But as I said, we have not been enforcing the law because we have not captured majority of the data, but very soon, it will become compulsory. And I believe that the rural people really know the importance of identity and they really need a form of identification. Way back in 2008, we carried out a privacy impact assessment throughout the country and the result was very good, nobody ever said they don’t want their data to be taken in terms of making sure that they are save.
We are talking about revenue generation, it is on record, of course, that everybody who is identified can easily be captured within the revenue database, such that agencies like the Federal Inland Revenue Service would be able to get taxing documentation from such a person; do you see NIMC for instance as being an agency that can help in revenue generation whereby everybody who is within that database becomes a revenue agent for the government?
I think it is an acceptable norm everywhere that people pay taxes; that you have to give something in order to gain something out of the system. There has to be value for value. And wherever you see that people are not paying taxes, again, it may be the system does not know them or the system decided to ignore them so that they can also not ask for their own rights. Bu definitely, when you pay your taxes, you can ask for your right. You can ask what the government is going to do for you; you can question the infrastructure in your area; you can question the public services, especially schools and hospitals around your place. So, the importance is to know everybody; to financially include everyone and also to encourage people to pay their own taxes and therefore allow them to demand for services to be provided and ultimately, it will also reduce corruption to the barest minimum.
From what you are saying, it means for instance, that if NIMC is able to register 187 million Nigerians, that’s a huge revenue base for the federal government, therefore, are you implying that the national identification system is an asset.
Indeed, the national identity database is of course, a national asset which needs to be clearly understood especially for the potential contributions it can make to the country if properly harnessed; and it can be used also for authentication of every other government services, including e-governance and also taxes. If you know through the database, for a certain area that these are the people that are due to pay taxes, and then from your tax return, this is the number of people that have paid taxes, it would allow you to now start asking questions and also the politicians too would know and tell their people that if you want to demand something from government, you also need to pay your taxes. So, identity is really a national asset. Also if there is social intervention that is required like if there is flood or fire in a particular area, you can really know those people affected and using the smart card again, you can even pay them whatever tokens you want to pay them, thereby eliminating all the middle men that would have siphoned the funds that are meant for that particular area. And also, if there is reciprocity, then you will see that it will now make the people to pay their taxes happily instead of the idea of sending the tax man or whatever being used before, people will definitely pay their taxes. It is an old system that you have to go door to door to ask people to pay their taxes. If it is simplified, they can use their card too to do financial transactions, pay their taxes and also use it to receive benefits from the government.
From what you are saying, it means technology plays significant roles in what you are doing; can you tell us about it?
Of course, technology plays a greater role on our system. First of all, we use technology in capturing the data; transmitting the information to our backend is also with the help of technology and everything that is done at the backend is also about technology and artificial intelligence. And also, thank God that now we have a lot of young people that know this type of technology and it’s not difficult for them to understand it and utilise it in many different ways that we may not be able to think about now.
Talking about legacy, you are here now, in five or 10 years when you leave this important agency, what legacy would you like to leave behind?
Well, today makes it 371 days that I have been here and I have 1089 days remaining; so I have an app that reminds me of the number of days that I have left and what I want to leave behind is that at the end of my tenure we should have at least, 100 million authentic identification in our own database; clean, at least 100 million by 22nd of November 2019. And at that particular time, there will be a lot of verifications and authentication activities that will be carried out and that time also, the negative image of Nigeria abroad would have been eliminated because they can query the database and know the person to whom they are dealing with. So, we would have changed the image of Nigeria and make e-commerce, e-business activities seamless. And also, we would have built better trust and credibility for Nigerians.
Excellent! Talking about image for Nigeria, a lot of people, as you may be aware, when their wives are pregnant, they want to go outside Nigeria to go and have their babies so that their babies can have citizenship of that country, do you have a feeling that one day, through this system that we are building, we would have a system that people would be longing to come to Nigeria to have their babies in order to have kind of number when they have their babies?
Well, we are planning with the Committee on National Diaspora and also the Special Assistant to the President on Foreign Affairs and Diaspora to really provide this service for Nigerians wherever they are in this world. And we believe that they are important to us because of the current world politics that has been happening. Instead of them being immigrants, we want them to be good ambassadors of Nigeria and expatriates. And also, Nigerians in Diaspora will feel at home wherever they are and then they will be good ambassadors of Nigeria because they will be able to show their identity and their identity can be verified and then they will build a proper trust system. So, we believe the number is really important and the number is the identity. You said some go to countries like US so that they can get the Social Security number, but we also want to assure every Nigerian that they can get their National Identification Number (NIN) and that number can be verified wherever you are, therefore, it will become very important for you to have your NIN than having any other number. We believe also that it will give Nigerians trust and credibility so that they don’t need to long for somebody else’s number. We also believe that we are going to build trust into our own system that wherever you are, you will be proud to be a Nigerian and also it will allow us to plan, not only for five years but to plan for 100 years. And when we plan for something like 100 years, including Nigerians from wherever they are, you will just imagine what we would be able to do. I understand that it’s a Nigerian (Adebayo Ogunlesi) that owns Gatwick Airport; you can imagine if that type of person decides to also come and invest in Nigeria, the kind of Airport he could build. So, we have many Nigerian engineers, scientists and all that everywhere and now that the world is connected, we want them to be proud of Nigeria wherever they may be and to also have this number. So, the number is really important. In future, it will be much more important than any other number that you can think of.
We are talking about technology and the new system you have is technology driven, is it transferable and is it managed locally?
We have three levels of technology; there are some of them that we do ourselves here, like if I take you from front end where we do data capturing, the equipment that we use, especially the computer systems, they are all made here in Nigeria by Omatek, so that is really local content. Also, we utilise the Nigerian telecommunications companies to send the data to the backend. The enrolment software that is being used to capture is also locally built. At the backend, we have some form of integration; the automated biometric identification, which is the most expensive part that is not made in Nigeria but it is being managed by Nigerians. Then we add some forms of integration and also public infrastructure, then the servers, we get those ones from outside, it’s not our own technology. Because we need to build robust system, we are still using technologies from outside, but we believe that in the future, it might be possible for us to build a completely Nigerian system. But in the current 21st Century, that is not really the focus; the focus is to get the best system from wherever you can get it and then put it together yourself and infuse your own local intelligence into it to now utilise it. Also, we believe that the software that is running is also ours. Whenever we ask foreign companies to do something for us, we also always ask for the source code so that our people will learn what that system is all about and also so that we cannot be held to ransom. So we have many companies that we work with locally and internationally. And because we are building a system that Nigerians at home and all over the world will use, we have to be very mindful of building a secure system and infusing our own local intelligence to make sure that it is a secure system.
So, in other words, you are saying that your database is not sitting somewhere in the world but is being managed by you locally?
Yes. Unlike most other federal agencies whose data are being held by some vendors, the data for NIMC is here in NIMC, so, we are the ones managing it and you will be taken there to go and see for yourself. Even right now, there are engineers working there and you can have a look at what Nigerians were able to build. Even when we have a summit here and some of the foreigners do come, when they see it, they say they never thought such things exist in Nigeria. So we have the capacity but we are not saying that we are 100 per cent; but we have the capacity to do at least identity management system because we have been in it for a very long time and we are also exposed to many other systems. We have been to a lot of conferences where we presented papers and also received awards for the kind of system that we have built, including the card.
We have 36 states and Abuja, what would be your advice to each of those controlling these units on enlightening and encouraging their people to register and have their identity?
It is very important, even if they are capturing data, it is always very important to carry out those activities with NIMC, so that we can authenticate the information that they have. But if one state is capturing data on its own and another state is capturing data and so on and so forth, there will still be standalone silos and also because in Nigeria you are free to move to anywhere you want, once a state captures data and maybe provides service for that, the next time you see influx of people from the neighbouring state and finding their way into that particular database. So, that is why you need to talk to all your neighbouring states and you can only do that by participating on National Identity Management database. When you have this single database, then it can help all the states. Again, you know the people that are living in your state for taxation purposes, that is when you need internally generated revenue and also you will know those people and it will also help you security-wise, such that if some people have committed some crimes in other parts of the nation and move to your state, you may be alerted by the security agencies and it will be easier to verify such information. So far, we have been talking to states, we have also started capturing data for some key states; among them are Kaduna, Gombe and many other states. I believe that in the next two years, we will be able to reach a point whereby we capture a lot of data and nobody else will be looking for someone to come and capture data again, even when vendors come to psyche them, they would have already known that they don’t need to create a different silo from the national identity database.
From what you have said, I can summarise that your job is really enormous, what level of funding do you think you require, because you started by talking about issue of fund, what level of fund will make NIMC very efficient the way you will like it to be?
Well, as I told you earlier that the funding that we are currently having is only about two per cent of our requirement; so, we really need consistent funding for two, three years before we can achieve the goals that I am talking about. I have been working with my boss, the Secretary to Government of the Federation, whom I report to and we have been working with the Vice President and also all the stakeholders; the Ministry of Budget and National Planning and the Minister of Finance. We are all working towards achieving these goals. Right now, there is not much cash, but we look for grants or borrow to make sure that this identity is done with once and for all. What will remain is to really manage the system in the future, but capturing the data has been a major challenge and then making it unique. We have been slow and steady but just to make sure that there are no mistakes; to make sure that where there is a mistake, it should be corrected easily and our experience from doing it in a big bang like 2003, close borders then start data capturing, never worked for us. Also we have been trying as much as possible to let citizens understand that it is actually the number that is their identity, not the card or any other thing. But at the same time, we will work out the process of issuing this card to all people that must have registered.