From Adanna Nnamani, Abuja
To assist Nigeria in its drive to capture all citizens and foreign residents in the country’s data base, the World Bank has promised to provide the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), with technical support.
This was disclosed by the Abuja based Senior Social Development Specialist of the World Bank, Victoria Korsiak at an inclusive workshop for stakeholders on Thursday
Korsiak who is working with the Nigeria Identity for Development project (ID4D) said the Nigerian government sought the support of the World Bank when it saw the importance of digital identification of its citizens and foreign residents and the need for alliance.
“The government, the Ministry of Finance NIMC and Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy have all recognised how central and important the NIN is for people to be able to have access to services for us to be able to link people across all the sectors in government.”
“The Nigerian government that  has recognised how important this is and has made this requests for this project.
“We are like technical partners giving technical assistance;  the government says we want to achieve this we can help them to design the strategy for achieving that goal. So the government came to us made a request said we want NIN for everybody in Nigeria. How do we do that?”
“Wo we are providing technical support to NIMC to this team (ID4D) that you see here today in the project implementation unit for thinking about what’s the best way to do this. What’s the best way to set up an enrollment system that covers everybody.” She noted
Explaining the relevance of the stakeholders workshop, she said, “we’re here today for the stakeholder engagement workshop for Nigeria ID for new projects really important initiative of the project because we need to hear from civil society, MDA’s other non state actors,  donors and the international community on what are the issues for accessing national ID number NIN, what are the barriers, the different marginalised and vulnerable groups have in getting a NIN.
“We all know the goal of this project is to cover all of Nigeria with NIN for everyone whether you’re a residence or a citizen doesn’t matter but we also know that there are some people that are very hard to reach both for geographic reasons but also trust issues lack of awareness and knowledge about the NIN, so we need civil society are MDAs to Partners the international community.”
The Coordinator for ID4D, Musa Idole in his welcome address said, “The Project Development Objective has mandated the project to create a robust foundational ID system for Nigeria that would involve NIMC and the Civil Registration system under the National Population Commission (NPC), the project had begun engagement with the NPC for areas of support, including digitising the registration of births and deaths, capacity building and a review of their legal and institutional frameworks.”
He further noted that thee project had initiated steps towards strengthening the legal framework on identification and data in Nigeria.
“Addressing the legal and legislative framework is key at this time. Enactment of a data protection law and amendment of some other existing laws, such as the NIMC Act are important to our operations.” He added.