Senior UN officials have said that Nigeria should establish a new body responsible for a harmonised biometric ID system.UN Deputy Secretary-General, Ms Amina Mohammed, made the call on Friday when she received Nigeria's delegates to the 50th session of the UN Commission on Population and Development in New York.”I would raise one concern and that is that in Nigeria we have a multiplicity of platforms that are doing a biometrics on everything; that is not efficient.”It is not cost-effective and there should be a better way for us, to say that, you have the banks taking everybody's biometrics, immigration is doing it. I mean everybody is doing.”By the time we went through it, there must be some basis that we can take and centralize that in some way and give it the premise for everybody's biometric.”So may be in a sense, the argument should be who should hold that responsibility of having the main frame and everyone now comes on and takes off their data for their constituency or their purpose.”Earlier this week, Safran Identity & Security announced that its contract with the National Identity Management Commission of Nigeria (NIMC) has been renewed. According to Safran, this system will enable the NIMC to create a reliable identity database of citizens and residents of Nigeria and each person will be identified by a unique National Identification Number (NIN). This operation will support the overall objectives of the Commission in its harmonisation of existing databases of all federal agencies in the country.In November 2015, Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari ordered all agencies to consolidate their biometric data storage to avoid any duplication. Nigeria has launched biometric initiatives including an eID programme, an electorial initiative and a bank verification number in recent years to tackle fraud and identity issues.
UN calls for harmonisation of Nigeria’s biometrics systems
