Nigeria’s image and business confidence are being significantly enhanced by the identity verification and management schemes put in place by the Federal Government over the past few years.
The schemes include the mobile subscriber (SIM Card) registration initiative, Bank Verification Number, as well as the Digital Passport, Drivers Licence and National Identity Card Schemes.
The schemes have helped with identity verification, through biometrics, and location, through physical points of reference, such as banks, where customers finances and transactions are domiciled, as well mobile phones, which register against cell towers in identified geographical locations across the country whenever a call is made, making subscribers identifiable and tracable.
Senior immigration sources tell BusinessDay that since the last set of non-digital passports expired in 2014, many Nigerians, especially those who maintained multiple international travel passports under different identities, which they switched for various purposes, especially upon being denied visa by some countries, have now become restricted to their true and verifiable identities.
The immigration department source further said that the deluge of name change and identity verification advertisements in the Nigerian media, following the Bank Verification Number exercise, underlines the volume of “shoddy and shady” identifications presented by many Nigerians before then.
Abiola Akiyode Afolabi, Chairperson, Transition Monitoring Group, says that the digital passport regime has limited the incidence of identity crimes in Nigeria but observes that more can be done to create synergy with other digital identity verification platforms, such as the SIM card registration and the BVN.
“When you go to the airport now, one of the things they do is to scan your passport and when they scan it, it shows whether it is original or not, but I think that criminal acts could be reduced drastically if there are greater synergies.
“I do not think these things have been linked in such a way that it could be used as a source of identification by Nigerians in other countries. In other developed countries, your social security card says a lot about you. You can use it to know your name, address, work and many other personal information. We have not explored this yet in Nigeria,” Afolabi said.
She explained that in the United States of America, when a crime is committed, the information of the culprit could be accessed and could help in investigation and tracking down of criminals, adding that Nigeria can achieve this feat if there are proper synergies.
“There could be synergy at some point. The Nigerian Immigration Service is collaborating with National Identity Management Commission, (NIMC) so that the information in our data base can be accessed and the information in NIMC can also be accessed together,” a senior immigration service source added.
Although the global online fraud report by Iovation in 2012 ranked Nigeria as the highest for cybercrime activities, recent data from the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS) on its fraud landscape report, shows the decline of e-fraud in the country.
Femi Fadairo, Head, Industry Security, NIBSS, said at a Cyber security and Banking Fraud Summit, held in Lagos that Nigerians are becoming more comfortable transacting on electronic channels which seem to be more much safer than before.
“There has been a 43 percent increase in the volume of electronic transactions and 11.5 percent increase in the value of transactions done online between 2014 and 2015. Even with the bad economy, Nigeria still saw a volume of 166,598,740 e-transactions compared to the volume of 43,857,767, 842 in 2014,” he said.
Fadairo said that regardless of the fact that electronic transactions have increased, which should naturally translate to higher risk, Nigeria has seen less e-fraud cases over the years.
“In 2014, a total of 1,461 fraud cases were reported, with an attempted fraud value of N7.8 billion but there were eventually able to steal about N6.2 billion. That is a success rate of over 80 percent.
“However, in 2015, we had a total of 10,743 fraud cases reported with a value of about N4.3 billion and the actual loss was about N2.2 billion. From these statistics, we can see that the success rate has decreased. Also the value of attempted fraud and the actual losses also reduced. Although we had more fraud attempts reported, many of those frauds did not sail through, to as compared to 2014,” he said.
Regha Onajite, Chief Executive Officer, Electronic Payment Providers Association (E-PPAN) said “most of the issues we have with e-commerce seem to revolve largely around anonymity that beclouds the whole process.”
Fortunately, the CBN recognised these issues and came up with the BVN registration amongst other means to verify the identity and authenticate every account holder.
Dipo Fatokun, director, banking and payment systems department at the CBN said Nigeria’s reliance on mobile technology made it compulsory for the Central Bank to keep working on new ways to further the banking environment in Nigeria.
“The CBN remains in the fore-front of ensuring that hacking security is not up-ended and this, we have been able to achieve by providing leadership to the Nigerian Electronic Fraud Forum (NEFF) which is an industry initiative that has aims such as educating and informing all banks and other stakeholders of various electronic fraud issues and trends, both locally and globally.
JUMOKE AKIYODE LAWANSON and IFEOMA OKEKE
