NIN Has Potential To Improve Nigerian’s Economy – NIMC Boss

The National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) has said the National Identification Number (NIN) has tremendous potential to improve Nigerian’s economy and is also vital for planning purposes and development. 

The General Manager, Legal and Regulatory Services of the commission, Mrs Hadiza Dagabana, made this known in an interview on Sunday in Abuja.

Dagabana said NIN was a legal identity, a promising benefit that would provide greater access to services and opportunities for the young and old, as well as greater protection of human rights and security. 

“It will ensure a more legitimate and equitable distribution of public resources, friendliness, data update procedure, protection and security of Nigerians and residents,” she said The NIMC official said the NIN was not just a form of identification, but also a means to provide basic population counts for the purposes of policy formulation, planning and monitoring.

Dagabana, who is also the Commission’s Secretary, also said that the NIN system also provided privacy and identity protection of individuals and citizens in the country. “The system can tell the population of Nigerians and residents and this will contribute to decision making and how we can plan forward. It tells us exactly how many people are in various locations for development purposes. 

“This system has interesting components that will be able to give us very good information to plan and to integrate government policies,’’ she said. Dagabana said the government was desirous of implementing the new system of identity management due to its firm belief in the benefits that accrued from it. 

She also said the public must understand that the National Identity Database (NIDB) which housed the NIN had been established and was currently being operated for the benefit of all Nigerians. The NIMC official said another component of the NIMC, which was the issuance of the National identity card was ongoing.

The Director-General of the agency, Mr Aliyu Aziz, had reaffirmed the commission’s commitment to carry out its statutory responsibility to all Nigerians. Aziz said this was in line with the NIMC Act 2007 which established the Commission and clearly defineed its role and responsibility to Nigerians. “So far, we have enrolled over 11 million unique data into the National Identity Database (NIDB),” he said.