The 54-member nations of the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation (CTO) rose from its yearly Forum and Council meeting in Nairobi, Kenya, last week to announce Prof. Umar Garba Danbatta as the new Chairman. Danbatta is the Acting Executive Vice Chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC). Danbatta &Taylor Danbatta &Taylor Chairmanship of the CTO by its rules is usually country specific and the position is held by that country’s Chief telecoms regulator. Nigeria won the position in 2014 and by this election, the first tenure ended and another began. Side by side with the election of Danbatta was the resumption of Engr. Shola Taylor as the Secretary General and Chief Executive of CTO. Taylor was named Secretary General on June 16, 2015 in London, United Kingdom. Danbatta who assumed office immediately after the election thanked the member nations for the honour done to Nigeria and promised to provide visionary leadership that will take CTO to the next level. With the re-election of Nigeria to the Chairmanship and Secretary General positions the country has effectively taken control of the affairs of the close-knit CTO. Danbatta was also full of praises for the immediate past Secretary General Prof. Tim Unwin for his dedication to duty and wished him well in his future endeavors. Island of Fiji was also yesterday named as the next host of the CTO Forum in 2016. Taylor’s appointment and assumption of duty comes a little over two weeks after another Nigerian, Dr. Akinwunmi Adesina took over as President of the African Development Bank (ADDB) in Abidjan, Cote D ‘Ivoire. He said that Taylor’s 35 years’ experience as a consummate and well groomed engineer will be put to bear on the activities of CTO and it is hoped that he will translate many of those pending decisions to actions in the days ahead “thereby taking the CTO to the next level, providing visionary leadership in the process.” Before his appointment as the Secretary General of CTO, Taylor has been the Chief Executive of Kemilinks International, a global ICT Consultancy firm based in Lagos, Nigeria. A telecommunications engineer by training, he brings his over 35 years of global telecommunications experience in ICTs with government and the private sector to CTO. He has consulted for several blue chip companies in Nigeria and the global ICT communities. From 1994 – 1999, Taylor served as Regional Director of Inmarsat. He also served as Space Technology coordinator for developing countries at the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) from 1993 to1994. He had earlier served as Project Director at ITU (1987 – 1993). “His very rich experience will certainly impact positively on the CTO,” Danbatta added.

I n the developed worlds, technology enables people to carry their whole world in a plastic card called the digital wallet. This wallet will identify, aid bills payment of individual carriers among other things. Having attained a relatively greater height in technology, the Nigerian government felt Nigerians are due for this and started a process of electronic Identity management which has seen Nigerians and legal residents in the country issued a National Identification Number NIN.
Recently, President Buhari directed all ministries, directorates and Agencies to harmonies their databases with that of the Identity management commission so that one NIN can identify a card carrier in all databases, sequel to commencement of adoption January 2016

Chris-Onyemenam

Hi-Tech engaged the man at helm of affairs, Director General, Chief National Identity Management Commission, NIMC, Chris Onyemenam, to ascertain how far this order is being carried out.
Can you highlight on what has been done since President Muhammadu Buhari, directed all Ministries Departments and Agencies (MDAs) to harmonize their biometric databases?
First, let me acknowledge that the President’s directive is timely and in our own opinion, the kind of support we need to make the harmonization a reality. The National Identity Management Commission had provided for the harmonisation of biometric databases in government agencies and there has been a conscious effort on the part of the management to make this happen.
The workability of the whole exercise is still hazy to many Nigerians even with the postponement of the exercise to January 2016. Can you make it a bit clearer?
Once an individual has been issued a National Identification Number, NIN, this number becomes that particular item in the database of every other agency that creates that common denominator by which if you want to confirm the identity of anybody, maybe in Federal Road Safety Commission’s (FRSCs)drivers license database, you are likely to reach the same conclusion as someone who is trying to confirm the data using the Independent National Electoral Commission (INECs) database, because there is the use of the universal identification   infrastructure.
This means two things; while these other government agencies are talking about your identity in relation to their database, which is a function specific or service based database, the National Identity Management Commission is talking of a database where who you are is first and foremost established and given a label. The label we give is the National Identification Number, NIN. Therefore, in the coming month, that is January 9, 2016, it is expected that all agencies should request for the NIN as required by Law, before any transaction can be carried out.
What is the level of commitment from other agencies of government so far?
The commitment we had before now from other agencies to harmonize data was not quite total. However, the agencies are much more committed because of the new presidential directive. So I am indeed grateful to the President for the directive because it is currently making things happen and very soon, in a period of one month to two months, or three months maximum this harmonization will be done for most of the existing MDAs with legacy databases, and we will announce the first success story.
For the MDAs who have not gone to the field, and do not have biometric databases yet, what we are doing now is to give them technical specifications that they must adhere to for the purpose of ensuring that they comply with the integration that is required in the long run. There are also those who do not need to bother about procuring data capture devices or having database infrastructure.
These ones will simply access our system and because we have given them the permission to download, they will be in position to download and verify the identities they want to work with and that will be it.
If you are promising to be through in three months, that means there may be some agencies that have completed harmonization with you already?
The agencies we have reached advanced stage in terms of harmonization are five. They are; the Central Bank of Nigeria, the National Pension Commission, the Independent National Electoral Commission, the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and of course, the Federal Road Safety Corps. This level of collaboration reached has given us reason to be hopeful that within a few months, we will be announcing success stories in these areas.
You are beating your chest that Nigerians having to carry numerous identity cards will no longer be, with the advent of the National Identity Management System?
My expectation is that in about five to ten years from now, Nigerians will now begin to hold just one or fewer cards. There will be fewer cards in the banking sector because the National Identity Card is also a payment card and in no distant time, we will be the largest payment card in circulation from a single source and this will help break many barriers, extend financial inclusion and services beyond the current frontiers and give a more robust meaning and relevance to this whole concept of cashless economy.
From the financial point of view, I think we have spent a lot. The duplication of efforts is not helping anyone, and this is avoidable.   Besides, this system will also check crime. If we do not have a biometric linked database that is unique, it means we do not have a unique identification scheme and if we do not have a unique identification scheme, then, it means we do not know who is who.
If we do not know who is who, it then becomes difficult to determine the eligibility or benefit status. So, people will always take advantage of it to commit crime, it becomes easy for an individual to claim who he is not because there is no central biometric linked database that can be cross-referenced each time an identity is claimed”
What is the level of collaboration the commission had enjoyed from state governments so far?
We have enjoyed collaboration from state government so far for two reasons; I know for instance, that we have signed an agreement with Ekiti State Government and the idea is to enable them partner NIMC, and leverage on our own expertise, presence and experience to capture data on the basis that it is compatible and can be used for national identity database population, even while they create their own database for some of the various social programs that the government had announced.
In the case of Kaduna State, the Governor, Nasir El-Rufai, has directed the civil servants to obtain their National Identification Number, NIN, as it will help ensure that ghost workers in the state are reduced to the barest minimum. Kaduna State is also one of the states that would be covered in this first phase of farmers’ database build-up.
These states we are partnering with are supporting us by ensuring that what NIMC is not able to provide to reach the rural people can be provided by the States, thus this collaboration will help not just the federal government, but also the state government ts because it will help ensure minimum cost in building state owned databases to actualize most of their campaign promises because social and economic development are best enabled when you plan with reliable statistics and facts and this is where the government will benefit from our work.
So far, how many people have enrolled?
Right now in the database, we have about 7million which is quite poor because there have been a deliberate effort by NIMC through third parties to do better than this record. These third parties have not been able to deliver in four years as a result of which we followed a due process, from August 1, the board of NIMC decided that it was no longer something we could manage and by February this year, those contracts were terminated.
They were actually concessions given to concessionaires and their job included collecting data on our behalf but they were not able to do that. So, if we did not do what we had done and were waiting for them, then NIMC will have nothing in the database. We now have a database infrastructure that cost us billions of naira to put in place and the expected data is not there yet. It is from the harmonization that we hope if concluded soon, that NMC will get the volume of data to make up for the gap that had been created by these concessioners.