Mr Chris Onyemenam is the Director-General of the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), whose commission is anchoring the new national identity scheme. In this interview with Group Politics Editor, Taiwo Adisa, he gives insights into the new policy, insisting that the benefits for the nation on the long run, far outweigh the planned financial commitments. Excerpts:How did your commission comeabout the idea of anothernational identity card scheme, going by previous attempt'There is a government decision and it was announced by the Minister for Information; he is the person to make such an announcement. And when there were criticisms, he came to the press and defended the action. What is left for us to do now is to begin to enlighten the public on the various issues associated with the project. More importantly, in this kind of matter, there are rules of engagement that govern the interaction between the legislature and the executive. So, it is good to abide by those rules so that one can be logical in the way the issue is being discussed.Another point is that in matters like this, it is usually good to collate criticisms, comments and the views. Then, one must do what is recommended, which is to do some introspection on where this criticism is coming from; whether these critisims are matched with policy elements. If they stand, one would make room for them and be honest about it and the public should be notified.Of course, one would have gone back to the government channel that gave that approval to also make those recommendations. But if they are, you would take the criticism and benchmark them against your enlightenment and awareness campaign to see whether what you want to use to inform and educate the public about what you are doing is adequate. If not, you begin to plan to bridge the gap and this take some time.It would appear as if, as a commission, we have not reacted. But like I said, first of all, you have to acknowledge the fact that we report to an institution and it is a government decision. In the next few days, few weeks and few months, we will be coming out with our awareness and enlightenment programmes to educate the public, even with informed opinion, to explain some of those things that they misinterpreted because it would appear to me, based on the analysis that we have done so far, that there is gap in information and there is a deep level of misinterpretation.Finally, we have a plan to engage the public and part of it is not to be reactive. That something was said in the newspaper today, or something that was said on the floor of the National Assembly, you now react immediately. No. For instance, on 30 July, 2009, the House of Representatives passed a resolution calling on the Federal Government to accelerate the implementation of the National Identity Management System (NIMS). When I heard that something not in that direction was credited to the legislature this time, all I had to do is to wait and see the copy of the resolution because that of 2009 was passed normally to us and we responded and it is on record. So, if you go and react withoutbeing sure, you might err and it is better to err on the side of caution.So, what is the new national identity project all about' Basically, I think the real conceptual distinction is the fact that in the past, until the very last project that everybody is aware of, the national identity card that was implemented by the defunct department for National Civil Registration, focused on the issuance of a national identity card as an end in itself. But what we want to do now amount to a away from focusing on card issue to now doing identity management. In the former, all you do is to issue a card and it is done under a mistaken belief that once you have a photo I.D issued by the Federal Government, your identity is guaranteed, which is wrong. It is not a guarantee of your identity. So, a focus on identity card issuance has been thepredominant idea in the past. What we are doing now, we will end up saying to you, this is your identity, not necessarily the card; whereas in the past, the focus is the card.Right now, the focus is on a database, it is with that database that you can issue a card, achieve harmonisation and integration of all other things so that, even if other institutions of governments are collecting data, it will be at a significantly reduced cost. They will all referred to the national identity database, unlike in the previous scheme, where they issue the plastic I.D which so many business centres can produce. Now, what we are doing is a smartcard, based on a chip-based technology in which case the cost of that card can be use by so many agencies of government. And without the card, you can still identity yourself.First and foremost is that we will create a database by using your 10 fingers and your head-to-shoulder photograph. Once you are enrolled in that database, you will be given a unique national identification number; that is the identity management. With these two in place, you can be issued the National I.D. card, any type of card. You can confirm your identity, with or without your card, because the number is there and that number is related to a database.In the past, there was nothing like identity verification and authentication. With the cards that people take to the bank till date, including the international passport, what they do is to just make a photocopy. But the essence of verification is that with that card, you are referred to the database on the basis which that card was issued to confirm that the data that was collected before and on the base that card issued is the same as what has been translated to you. And to be able to do this, not only will you have the unique database, you have to have all the people enrolled there; you have to have access to it; you must have backup, it is 24-7. You walk into any ATM machine, you slot in your card, and you expect to get money. That will be the same thing for the verification. If you go into any bank, hotel, airport, university, anywhere you go to, it will be possible for the institution, once they have been accredited and licensed, to access our database. It will be possible for them to access and confirm that you are truly who you are, not just by looking at the picture on the card and looking at the person.Does that mean there will be some inter-agency links between you, the Federal Road Service Commission (FRSC), Customs, Immigrations and all other agencies'We actually have about 14 of them already in place, but the data is not yet in place. One of the things that we are planning to do currently, and it is ongoing, is to migrate the data from the same register or the data from the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). By migration, we mean they have collected it, based on their own specification and we were involved in helping them to design. Then we will subject it to our own process of ensuring that if we take the data, it meets the format we want. And once it enters into our database, it will not be possible for the biometric to be used to bring in another name.Do you think that the Federal Government can justify it'Yes, we can justify it because we made a proposal on the basis of which further discussions were held and decision was taken. Let me make a revelation; the current system that we have, which was built, was based on a 2001 contract. Something that was put in place between 2001 and 2003, and if it were in a private company, would have been written down over and over again. If you are not upgrading, one day, it will pack up. I am just using that as an example; that is not what we should be looking at. What we should be looking at is that in the past technology, the focus is to issue card, but contemporary identity management has gone beyond just issuing a particular type of card; it has gone beyond having the database of the card issue, to having the database that informs the issuance of a particular type of card.After spending N30 billions on this project say next year, how many years' gap will Nigeria need to spend another N30 billion, or N35 billion on the project' Don't look at it that way! What we are trying to do, with the kind of collaboration we have with the INEC, it has an advantage. The INEC will not need billions and they don't need to call people out every four years. We want to make sure that you don't have to come out and queue under mango trees to do any form of enrolment registration. The slogan is enroll once and be identified for life. There is an arrangement for us to collaborate with the National Population Commission (NPC); you are issued the national identification number which is the most important thing.So, when people are talking about card, card, card, it is because of the mindset of the past. Right now, we are looking at 16 years and above, once we have achieved the relationship we want to achieve with NPC, so that we can be registering. Then we will be able to catch up completely. So, you will discover that if you start today, in 16 years, you would no longer be talking about 16 years and above because you have started from age 16. It will be difficult to forge identity; it will be difficult to have more than one identity; the phenomenon of ghost workers will disappear at all levels. It will be easy for you to grant scholarship to a particular people because it will be easy to identify them without going to anybody.We have used the national population census figure of 2006 to estimate the number of those who will be covered by this enrolment and it will be a significant impact if we are able to migrate data from NPC. The president has been very particular about this project and he asked if we were not going to spend this kind of money again. We gave explanations, before the approval was given.
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