At last, the long wait is over. On August 28, 2014, the Nigerian National Electronic Identity Card (e-ID card) was unveiled and the card issuance process formally kicked off. The aim is to issue and manage over 120 million e-ID cards within the next five to 10 years. That’s the NIMC dream, and it’s possible!
This effort started in 2005 with the constitution of a committee on the Harmonisation of Identification Schemes in Nigeria by the then President Olusegun Obasanjo. Nasir el-Rufai, former FCT minister, chaired the committee. On March 22, 2006 the Federal Executive Council (FEC) approved what later came to be known as the National Identity Management System (NIMS). This was followed by the formal launch of the National Policy and Institutional Framework for a National Identity Management System in Nigeria – one document most critics seem never to have read or ignored.
When on May 25, 2007 the NIMC Act was signed into law, the journey seemed well-founded. Those of us who joined the NIMS project just before then had no idea what lay ahead. We now know better. Suffice it to state that the e-ID card is remarkably different from the one issued under the scheme that was implemented between 2001 and 2006 by SAGEM (now Safran Morpho), the French company that was contracted in 2001 to do it. Whilst the e-ID card is based on smartcard technology, the previous one was based on (2D) Bar Code technology.
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The e-ID card is part of an infrastructure for identity management. So it is not an ‘end in itself’. Most card schemes in Nigeria today are just that – issue and manage the cards. So the card is the end/objective. Identity management is not the same as card issuance management.
The e-ID card, the third in a five-component National Identity Management System (NIMS) infrastructure, remains what most Nigerians (want to) see as the index of success of the project. Indeed, there are those who, for good reason, believe that the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) represents another bogus effort by government at addressing a simple problem, claiming that there is nothing ‘reformatory’ in the statutory mandate of the NIMC (Act 23 of 2007).
That is not important. As one critic put it recently, it is not the number of enrolment centres or the level of automation of the registration process or the quantity of hardware and software assembled and or deployed that matters. It is not about the conducive enrolment environment or the fact that you can go and register at your convenience, within minutes and at a known location.
No, these things do not matter at all, otherwise there would not still be new biometric projects springing up each day! Even the private sector partners of NIMC are quick to criticise the NIMC effort to justify their promotion of new and or similar and competing projects (that are subsequently contracted to them). What a paradox!
What matters, and I agree perfectly, is how many Nigerians have been or can be expeditiously enrolled under the NIMS? How many Nigerians hold or can have their e-ID card and how soon or when? How many Nigerians can benefit from the ‘proof of identity’ services, a component of the NIMS infrastructure? How safe, unique, accessible to other MDAs and the private sector are the National Identity Database and the multiple applications on the e-ID card?
Indeed, how soon can the law enforcement agencies begin to use the NIMS to fight crime and insecurity? Can we sustain the NIMS? How will NIMS stop the proliferation of data capture activities and meet the identity authentication and verification needs of MDAs and the private sector? These are some of the indices of success that should matter.
Government has demonstrated its determination to resolve this major social infrastructure gap. Fortunately, initial studies by the NIMC provided enough empirical evidence for some of the strategic decisions and policy options adopted in the deployment of the NIMS.
Unfortunately, however, the private sector has not responded appropriately to the project. Whilst bidding for the concession in 2006/7, they documented their proposal strongly including evidence of financial capability. Then we had the financial meltdown of 2006-2009. Although the concession was signed in July 2010, it has not been possible to achieve financial closure and but for the intervention of NIMC, based on the public-private policy of government, this project would have since become comatose.
The journey to the e-ID card launch was long and difficult. Many not only doubted, they questioned the rationale even in the face of evidence on global trends. Most dissenting views and voices seemed founded strongly on old habits and ways of doing things. The message was somehow clear: NIMC must get it right or be damned.
Five important points to note: this may well be a greenfield people are unwilling to admit. Second, most critics understood the problem of identity card issuance very well but not the problem of identity management. So they never really understood and or came to terms with the NIMS project. Consequently, they did not ask the right questions nor probe deeper; they compared ‘oranges with apples’. They never even bothered to visit the NIMC. Third, the old habit of ‘pull it/him down’ syndrome never really gave way. Fourth, the private sector seemed unprepared for the role and business model it signed up on. Finally, the deep public cynicism carried over from past efforts persisted and perhaps still persists.
The e-ID card is a multiple applications card. The design, approved by FEC in November 2012, was to ensure anti-tampering and counterfeiting. It is made of 100 percent polycarbonate with a customised 80 kilobyte (kb) chip. There are 13 applets including the Match on Card (MoC), electronic identity (e-ID), electronic public key infrastructure (e-PKI), an ICAO applet and a payment applet. There are applets also for voters register, health insurance, insurance policy, tax, pension, drivers licence, SIM register, transport, and an extra applet for immediate deployment as necessary. The Malaysian card has more applets!
The personalisation of the cards requires special skills and equipment in a high security area typical of bank ATM cards, except that the card profile for personalisation combines two worlds, the EMV/ATM world and the e-ID world. This is another point where the global trend is captured. Electronic identity is now being used as a deep anchor for electronic payments and the e-ID/payment nexus provides a ready KYC infrastructure which fosters financial inclusion and deepens the electronic payment circuit as identity theft-related fraud is shut out immediately whilst providing a ready infrastructure for bringing everyone, including the informal sector, into the formal financial services sector.
Chris Onyemenam