The Managing Director, NIMC, Mr Aliyu Aziz, disclosed this while speaking at the 2017 INDO-AFRICA ICT Expo, organised by the Telecom Equipment & Services Export Promotion Council (TEPC) in Lagos.

According to a statement by Mr Loveday Ogbonna, the Head of Media of NIMC, the theme of the presentation is: “Innovative Developments supporting Evolving Digital Economy.”

The NIMC boss said the Federal Government’s plan to strengthen fiscal management and promote good governance and transparency requires knowing and being able to identify citizens, which can only be achieved with the NIN.

According to him, the fragmented identity ecosystem in the country has remained a deterrent to the growth of basic amenities, which is required to realise a reasonable standard of living in the country.

“This means that key economic challenges including improving security, rebuilding the economy and tackling corruption in the country have not been tackled because there is no comprehensive central database to guide the provision of these needs.

“Although, Nigeria has the potential to be a major player in global economy, it has continued to struggle with development and the provision of very basic amenities such as education, healthcare, portable drinking water, food, and housing due to the lack of a central database to aid planning and policy making,” he said.

Aziz explained that the NIMC has a mandate to populate the National Identity Database (NIDB) with citizen’s data and NIN, as well as ensure that every registered person can be easily and quickly verified and their identities authenticated with the NIN.

“The NIN is a very significant component of the National Identity Management System (NIMS).

“It is a non-intelligent eleven digit number, issued to individual upon successful enrolment into the database.

“The NIN is a unique identifier, a requisite for the economic, social and political progress, which can be verified and authenticated by institutions and persons in both the public and private sector, using the verification and authentication platforms already deployed by NIMC,” he noted.

He, however, said that institutions and organisations aiming to scale up the digital economy may not be able to offer innovative products and services to consumers without proper identification as all modern economic services globally are done digitally and rely on proper identification.