Reports of our system failure false – NIMC

On Tuesday, the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) said any report from the various organizations using their services that their system is down at any time is erroneous and only targeted at discrediting the commission.

Mr Olufemi Fabunmi, NIMC Director (Database), said the commission’s system has never been down and also assured it has never lost any data in all the years it has been operating.

Fabunmi made this known at a one-day roundtable for desk/liaison officers of Nigeria Digital ID4D held in Abuja.

According to him: “One of the primary things that happened is service failure in connectivity between the people demanding for service, like the Immigration and our office and most times, what we found out is the message displayed on the application seems to be like a conspiracy just to discredit NIMC.

“Most times, the problem is from that service provider that is supposed to get to NIMC. In the train situation, we discovered that the internal network of the service provider for Nigeria Railway Corporation was not communicating, and they said the NIMC server is down. Meanwhile, other people are using the service

“For the years we have been operating, we have never lost data. If for any reason, we call some people to come back and register, that’s when you say we have lost data. Our backup system has covered that, and our systems are designed for high availability.”

In his welcome remarks, the Nigeria Digital ID4D Project Coordinator, Mr Musa Odole Solomon, noted that the meeting was aimed at explaining the essence of the Nigeria Digital ID4D project.

According to Solomon, the project seeks to address the infrastructure deficit of the NIMC that poses a risk to the continuous enrollment of people, notably women, youth and persons living with a disability.

“The fact that this is the first official meeting with the desk officers, since after your nomination by your organizations, makes it even more crucial. It will avail us the opportunity of understanding the Project better.

“The Nigeria Digital ID4D is genuinely interested in promoting inclusion of marginalized groups because of the realization that historically, ID systems often lead to exclusion due to logistics and social stigma, which may hinder the participation of women and persons with disability.

“Nigeria Digital ID4D project would leverage the training opportunities to close the basic skills gap and promote the adoption of digital technologies across Nigeria.

“We are taking deliberate steps to ensure that the challenge of inter-agency rivalry is a thing of the past. It is in the overriding interest of Nigeria that institutions of government collaborate,” he added.

He, therefore, called for synergy among all public institutions in Nigeria, particularly those involved in the country’s ID ecosystem, to collaborate and actively participate in the project implementation.

The World Bank, European Investment Bank, and the French Development Agency fund the Nigeria digital ID4D project.

The project’s development objective is to increase the number of persons with a National Identity Number (NIN), issued by a robust and inclusive foundational Identity system that facilitates their access to services.