By Kokumo Goodie, Lagos, Nigeria
The Executive Vice Chairman, Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Prof Umar Garba Danbatta, has agreed to release the commission’s data from the ongoing Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) cards registration exercise to the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC).
Danbatta who spoke while receiving the NIMC Director-General, Aliyu A Aziz, who paid him a courtesy call in Abuja, said the decision to release the data is in line with Federal Government’s instruction to transfer validated data to the agency.
Inter-agency and other stakeholders’ collaboration is a key component of the Eight Point Agenda Dambatta unveiled in February this year, with a view to moving the industry forward.
He said: “I will like to pledge our commitment to this cooperation between NIMC and the NCC to ensure that we have a secure, reliable database containing biometric information for all Nigerians, which will definitely augur well for the security of the country among other benefits.
“So we are committed to this. We recognise the importance of this cooperation and I would like to stress the need to give it all the seriousness it deserves.
I am happy that there is this MoU and there is also a Federal Government’s directive, which would help in facilitating the data transfer.”
The EVC, however, called for the reinvigorating of the existing inter-agency committee handling the exercise in order to fast-track the peace-meal data transfer to NIMC.
In the same vein, the EVC directed the NCC to ensure that the data transferred to NIMC are fully backed up to avoid any hitches in future.
Responding to a question at the occasion, however, the NIMC boss who expressed a delight at the cooperation between the two agencies said the data transfer from NCC would also improve ongoing National Identification Number (NIN) exercise of the commission.
He said NIMC would use the NCC’s data to assign NIM to Nigerians who were captured in the validated data received.
