The federal government is replacing the Bank Verification Number (BVN) and other data already collected with the National Identity Number (NIN), the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Dr Isa Ali Ibrahim Pantami has said.
Pantami disclosed this after monitoring the NIN enrolment process at telecom operators’ offices in Abuja on Monday.
“I made a presentation to the National Economic Sustainability Committee and I drew the attention of the CBN Governor that we need to replace BVN with NIN because the BVN is a bank policy while NIN is a law because it has been established by law so the strength of the law wherever you go is not the same with a policy of one institution”, the minister said.
He said the NIMC database is the primary one in the country that each and every institution should make reference to.
The minister said with the database of the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), the level of security is 99.9 per cent, noting that there is no database that is 100 per cent secured, “the highest you can go, I think we are there”.
He said the government initiated the Nigeria Data Protection Regulation to guarantee safety of all data collected in the country.
At the MTN office in Maitama, Pantami was told that people who had enrolled before couldn’t have their data verified on the database.
“We are working on that, they are being verified but it is slow due to the high numbers of requests. We are working on coming up with one verification and we do hope that the issue will be resolved soon”, Pantami responded.
