The Nigerian Electronic ID Initiative

Nigerian Electronic ID initiative
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Nigerian Electronic ID initiative
Introduction
Nigerian national Electronic Identification Card Initiative is a great program to provide a comprehensive document serving as a national identity card, travel document, identification document with solid security features, biometric, and payment card. Means and processes of identification are critical to human coexistence. This paper is a critical exploration focusing on the Nigeria Electronic Identification Initiative. The article provides an in-depth discussion of the background of the electronic identification project, its adoption and implementation, and threats and limitations. It will be chaotic if humans lack formal identification methods. The paper demonstrates Nigeria had trouble identifying its citizens, and lacking an effective registration n system could have aggravated fraud issues in the time preceding the digitized identification era. The concept of human identification is espoused in information systems. It is often essential to establish a particular set of data directly identified with a specific person. The procedures, items, and processes applied in identifying people or individuals have undergone tremendous transformations due to emerging technologies. The progressive development in identification remarkably evolved from when people were identified by sounds and physical features to physical items such as passports and identity cards to recognize persons. The contemporary society is a highly security-conscious community. There is an increasing focus on biometric-based identification solutions due to their enhanced accuracy, validity, and reliability. Multiple biometric databases provide a more robust foolproof against impersonation, fraud, and hacking due to the need for precision.
Nigeria is no exception. It witnessed a paradigm shift in the way people are identified due to various necessities and socio-economic factors. People deploy different types of physical identification, including driving licenses, passports cards, and national identity, for identity purposes. However, there is a growing interest in adopting electronic identity cards that capture all individual data, which improves managing and accessing people's data. Identity is necessary for modern development. Government, firms, and institutions, which offer services or goods, often need to identify the people they are dealing with without a reliable and consistent approach to demonstrating a person's identity, exercising fundamental rights, accessing individual entitlements, and accessing core government services.
Further, without a trusted identification system, citizens find it challenging to conduct their daily activities. With the emerging technologies and tech devices, such as smartphones, increasing internet accessibility, widening and emerging social media platforms, and digital applications, it is increasingly necessary to digitize one's identity. Thus, developing an electronic or digitized form of identity offers a breakthrough in nurturing inter-sectorial sharing of personal identities with much efficiency.
Brief Background
The current electronic identification initiative in Nigeria is disruptive and is a significant game-changer in identification. Before this initiative, Nigerians could access services, such as banking services, immigration, education, and voting, in the absence of digital identification cards. During the era of old identification cards and systems, there were increased fraud cases, double registration, and foreigners from obtaining the card due to lack of technological enable a system that could capture robust security details, including images and biometric features. It must be noted that the old identification cards were optional, unlike the new ones, which are compulsory.
The increasing challenges associated with the physical identification card in Nigeria largely contribute to the development of electronic identification card system initiative. The increased accessibility to the internet, ever-ballooning smartphone ownership, access to contemporary technologies, and a current wave of globalization contribute to significant security concerns. The insufficient registration and the lack of an effective personal identification system could have partly contributed to rising cybercrime cases in Nigeria. Lack of electronic identification cards can contribute to anonymity where cybercrime criminals may not be easily traced. Electronic identity cards are embedded with specialized ink and security features, with a radiofrequency chip containing person’s identification features such as digital image and fingerprint. Thus, the identification process's deficiencies marked by lack of electronic personal identification cards could have contributed partly to cybercrime-related issues due to the inability to track and identify the criminals.
In Nigeria today, several internet-assisted crimes, also called cybercrimes, occur regularly in various forms such as fraudulent electronic mailing, pornographic media, identity theft, hacking, cyber harassment, spamming, ATM spoofing, piracy, and phishing. These crimes present with far-reaching implications such as damage to the nation's s reputation, loss of funds, and many more. The concerns regarding cybercrimes may have partly necessitated the need for electronic identity cards, which can now limit such cases. The increasing cybercrime activities in Nigeria are attributed to rising levels of unemployment, lack of effective cybercrime laws and legislations, incompetent security on personal computers, and ever-growing internet access to millions of people services become reliant on it for their daily operation, so does the threat landscape. Nigeria understood the importance of identification, but it wrestled with various challenges in developing an effective identification system. The Department of National Civil Registration (DNCR), tasked with issuing national identity cards, was developed under the Federal Ministry of Interior (FMI) in 1978. The Nigerian authorities advanced the idea of a national identification card for its citizenry before 1977. In 1978, DNCR was empowered to enroll each citizen of age eighteen years or above and issue with a national identity card. The 1979 legislation allowed DNCR to register all citizens of Nigeria from the age of eighteen years or more above, issue them with a national identity card to every person registered, and summarized data from the registrars2. This program was had a substantial leaning towards "merely providing identity cards" as an approach to controlling illegal immigration, validating documents, including travel certifications, and setting up a personal identity framework for managing fiscal transactions with financial institutions2.[Omodunbi, B. A., P. O. Odiase, O. M. Olaniyan, and A. O. Esan. "Cybercrimes in Nigeria: Analysis, detection and prevention." Journal of Engineering and Technology 1, no. 1 (2016): 37-42.]
The program existed for only eighteen months. In 2001, DNCR contracted a private partner to enroll citizens and issue them with Nigerian identification cards at the cost of about U. S$236.8 million. This program lasted five years, where identification cards were issued to 37.3 million people before the program ended. The private partner deployed the necessary information technology framework to register residents, applied a biometric approach to affirm the distinguishing of each registered person, provided information collection request (ICR) from correction center and sixty thousand registration points, and issued sixty million national identity cards using the card.[World Bank. 2016. ID4D Country Diagnostic: Nigeria, Washington, DC: World Bank License: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 IGO (CC BY 3.0 IGO) p.2] [Ibid p. 2] [World Bank. 2016. ID4D Country Diagnostic: Nigeria, Washington, DC: World Bank License: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 IGO (CC BY 3.0 IGO) p.4]
This program was entirely abandoned, and in 2007, the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) Act was passed. This policy nurtured NIMC as the body charged with identification in Nigeria. NIMC Act was derived from lessons and challenges gained from the implementation of previous identification programs. NIMC Act created a distinction between developing a national identification program, identity document provision, and electronic verification processes.
The initiative of Nigerian Electronic ID
Nigerian Electronic ID initiative is a transformative agenda planned and implemented by the Nigerian government in conjunction with World Bank and a partnership with MasterCard. Nigerian federal and state agencies collect the same biometric information from persons, leading to a high fiscal cost. The program is centric on the generation of digitized identity cards. First, the card will serve as a national identity card. Secondly, it functions as a travel document as per International Civil Aviation Organization standards. Third, it is an electronic and biometric card with robust identification. Finally, it serves as payment, application, and a tool for facilitating ATM cash transactions.[The Engine Room. (2020). Understanding the lived effects of digital ID: A multi-country report]
Digitized personal indemnities are becoming a reality all over the world. There is growing enthusiasm and interest to create a centralized point containing necessary personal identity data. The move towards centralized identity data is fueled by the need to ease the authentication process and limit the possibility of identity theft, fraud, and other cyber-related crimes.
The emerging technologies and their related growth are fueling interests in venturing involving identity and personality presentation. The internet is being used to leverage online transactions, especially e-commerce, e-Government, and ePayment. However, identity theft is one of the challenges impeding the effective integration and practice of these internet platforms of business transactions because it is seamless interaction where face-to-face exchange is not necessary. Each platform of business transaction is associated with a specified identification system. A person is often expected to present more than one identification documents as the driver's license for identification as a driver, the National ID Card for national identification, International travel, and various payment cards. A unified identity system where a single electronic identity (eID) is issued can be used across multiple business transactions. It is anchored on the philosophy of unified electronic identification systems that Nigeria is on its trajectory of adopting an electronic identity card initiative program.[Ayo, C. K. ...