World Bank Assesses NIMC’s Operations
Efforts to involve the World Bank in government’s identity sector reform seem to be yielding results of late.
The World Bank’s department for Digital Identification for national development has sent a delegation to Nigeria to assess the current effort in fully addressing Nigeria’s thirty –eight year old problem of identity management.
The two-week working tour of the Mission, it was gathered, would conduct a careful study of how Nigeria’s digital identity scheme has been deployed against a ‘best practice’ tool kit that was developed and published by the World Bank in June 2014.
The Mission will also conduct in-depth reviews of stakeholders in the Identity Ecosystem, including the National Pension Commission, National Heath Insurance Commission, Federal Road Safety Commission, the Joint Tax Board’s ‘TIN’ scheme, Central Bank’s Bank Verification Number scheme- BVN, the vital registration end of the work of the National Population Commission, PITAD and perhaps the INEC. These other players in the identity ecosystem in Nigeria- all government establishments at the federal level- have still not been able to harmonize with the NIMC scheme following government’s directive to them to do so.
The Mission is said to be interested in ascertaining the extent of work done and how, through providing a multi-level support, which may include technical, training, financial, regulatory, policy and even awareness and enlightenment schemes,the digital identification scheme in Nigeria will be properly aligned to sustain its commitment to global best practice, help Nigeria optimise national resources typically allocated to the sector, foster its use for driving economic development and pro-poor programmes and help Nigeria’s current effort gain stronger momentum to achieve full coverage and integration which will make the benefits of digital identification to trickle down to the rural areas in Nigeria and impact poverty in a decisive manner. Sources close to the World Bank country office in Nigeria confirmed the development, which in part, is as a result of the positive international reviews the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) project has been receiving in the last two years especially after the Commission announced its partnership with MasterCard Worldwide and subsequently launched the National eID Card, the second most important milestone of the scheme.
Although the source added that there were no commitments yet, the World Bank had visited NIMC a few times last year and based on its initial findings concluded that the Commission was ‘very much on the right part’, leading up to the current Mission visit.
It was also gathered that the World Bank Mission is part of an ‘ICT For Economic Development Strategy Programme which provides the bank an opportunity for helping to establish or strengthening digital identification schemes in Africa based on an extensive research which has confirmed the positive role such a strong scheme can play in fostering economic development and reducing poverty.