Onyemenam says @NIMC 'We’ve attained paradigm shift'

ITRealms:

The Director General/CEO of the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) Barrister Chris Onyemenam, has said his team attained a paradigm shift with the successful setup and implementation of the National Identity Management Scheme (NIMS) in the country, reports ITRealms.

Onyemenam made this declaration in a chat with selected media over the weekend, saying that the value proposition that flows from the NIMS cuts across the three tiers of the government, the private sector, the family, and to the international society.

“If you take it by extension to the civil service generally, the concept of ghost workers or duplicate identities will be eliminated. No one can be in Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System (IPPIS) more than once, because the individual will be traced through the biometrics and the National Identification Number (NIN),” he said.

The NIMC DG expressed confidence in the current setup of the scheme, revealing that the Commission activities is in tandem with global best practice, which says, “Uniquely identify every citizen and legal resident, in terms of ‘who you are’ and not what you are eligible to or what you can participate in like the Voter card, or what you are obliged to like Tax, or what you need like the driver’s license.”

Onyemenam explained that the ability to create a single version of truth will serve the entire country because the NIMS is a cross cutting platform. 

“If you don’t know people and they commit a crime, they can deny it. If someone is able to have more than one identity then they can benefit from their own acts of deception,” he said.

As said by him, nowadays, 419 is rampant because people could claim to be who they are not and still get away with it. 

“So in terms of fighting crime, what we have done with the NIMS is an important tool for law enforcement agencies to fight crime, corruption and/or ensuring that the war against corruption succeeds, because you can’t hide from yourself after having been identified by the Commission as a criminal,” Onyemenam said.

He emphasised that because it is from birth to death, NIMS provides the economic planners of the country that hardcore data about some of the social economic characteristics of citizens in a slightly more factual sense than what other organisation provides, for instance, “if you know the people in the age bracket 0-13 and you want to be able to feed them, you will use the uniqueness of the identity that has been given to them, to ensure that the benefit goes to them only.” 

The same, he said, applies to scholarships, bursaries, stipends to the unemployed, etc. this is the kind of benefit that the element of none repudiation and unique identification confirms on the administration of subsidies, special programmes, and general economic management or eceonomc governance in the country.   

+Remmy Nweke (ITRealms) +ITRealms DSA
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