15 million BVN Already Linked With NIN, Says NIMC Boss

Director General of the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), Aliyu Aziz, has disclosed that 15 million people with Bank Verification Number (BVN) have been linked with the National Identity Number (NIN).

Besides, he said the ongoing enrollment into the National Identity System has nothing to do with the second wave of COVID-19, as the exercise had been on before the pandemic.

He told The Guardian in Abuja on Friday that NIMC has adequate equipment and up to this moment, the organisation has not utilised it to full capacity and the strategy now has changed completely.

Aziz stated that part of NIMC’s mandate is to harmonise and integrate part of the existing databases and so far, only 15 million BVN that has been harmonized with NIN.

“So, if you have your BVN and you were captured, what you need to do is to go our website and update your record and then you would be issued the NIN,” he said, insisting that the enrolment exercise has not been suspended.

He recalled that Subscriber Identification Module (SIM) registration has been ongoing since 2008, but that improper SIM registration remains an issue.

“Wherever there is a crime, a SIM is always related in solving those crimes. That is why government wants this done, and to make sure that that is done, government always reminds the telecommunications companies, even last year, that that must be done.

“You also find out that unregistered SIMs were being sold and used for crimes, hence the exercise is very important, and that is where the linkage comes in, because by law, it is only NIN that is the token for identity.”

According to Aziz, COVID-19 measures put in place during enrollment have been effective, noting: “The measures have been with us in Nigeria since March last year and we are expected to stick to those measures.

“For NIMC, we are able to control that inside our enrolment centres, but when it is outside our enrolment centres, that is where the difficulty is. For place like Lagos and Abuja, we do get the law enforcement officers to help us.”

 

Culled from The Guardian