The minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Dr Isa Ali Ibrahim Pantami has announced that the Federal government is in the process of replacing the Bank Verification Number (BVN) and other data collected by data collecting institutions with the National Identity Number. (NIN)
The minister disclosed this after a facility tour and monitoring exercise of the NIN enrolment process at telecom operators’ offices in Abuja on Monday, February 8.
Dr Pantami said that he had made the suggestion to the national economic sustainability committee and drawn the attention of the central bank to the fact that the NIN needed to replace the BVN as the former was backed by law while the latter was a mare institutional policy.
He commented that the strength of the law was not the same as the policy of an institution.
“BVN is our secondary database, while NIN and the database is the primary one in the country that each and every institution should make reference to NIMC,” he said.
“On the board of NIMC, the CBN governor is a member, dg DSS is a member, chairman of FIRS is a member, INEC chairman, the office of the National Security Adviser, National Population Commission and the Nigerian immigration service are all members of the board. This is to show you that it is the primary database that every institution in the country should reference”
Pantami boasted that Nigeria was at the forefront in Africa regarding data protection regulations, claiming that the level of security in the entire database was 99.9 per cent.
Discover more from LN247
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
