*Why your identity is incomplete without an address

*Lauds Gov Sanwo-Olu’s digital initiatives

By Jide Ajani

It was Hernando de Soto, a popular Peruvian development economist who once said “without an address, you exist outside of the law, you might as well not exist at all”. So, when Bisi Adegbuyi, former Postmaster General of the Federation, started his campaign with GAIN (Grassroots Address and Identity Network) initiative, many could not relate with it and those who could and were in positions of authority, played games. Today, the chicken has come home to roost. About a week ago, there was a controversy over identity theft and the compromise of the National Identity Management Commission, Nimc’s, system.

But experts are now saying that even the Nimc system is not as encompassing as it ought to be. This is because the system simply addresses the WHO, which is the individual, but there is no digital addressing component of the WHERE, that will make it water tight.

That is where Adegbuyi steps in. In this interview, he explains the possibilities yet untapped because of the absence of a digital addressing system. He also explains what needs to be done to the Nimc Act and other ancillary legislations. With digital addressing solutions in place, Adegbuyi insists that potential building collapse and fire incidents, as have occurred recently in Lagos, for instance, can be nipped before they even occur.

Excerpts:

About a week or so ago, there was this concern raised about a possible compromise of the systems of the National Identity Management Commission, Nimc. You know how Nimc works. What can you say about this?

Unfortunately, this is personally painful to me. I will be upfront with you. When I was Postmaster General, I paid the Director General of Nimc, Engineer Aliu Azeez, a courtesy visit for at least two times with a view to entering into some kind of partnership (between NIPOST and Nimc) so that their identity solution can be based on digital addressing solution that NIPOST as the provider of last-mile solution would have partnered with them. Some of these issues would easily have been resolved because address is a fundamental attribute of legal identity.

Unfortunately, the Nimc Act stops at the issue of who, which is the issue of digital identity but says nothing about where. That is the gap in the enabling law. It therefore requires an amendment. Having said that, I think it is in our own collective interest to assist the dynamic young lady who is the Director General of Nimc. She is trying her best. She is doing everything possible to clean up the register, but the truth of the matter is that no matter how hard she tries, if a digital address is not adopted, it is not seen as a vital attribute of legal identity, I am sorry, you will not be labouring in vain. I want everybody to fact-check me. Anywhere in the world, legal identity is always addressed as a vital attribute. With digital addressing systems in place, it will be difficult to carry out identity theft the way it was allegedly done. But the minister and Nimc say they are looking into it so, let’s not get ahead of ourselves

You’ve been going on and on about this digital addressing solution…

(Cuts in) Yes, I have! It is for the good of the country. The United States of America has social security as its identity system. A fundamental attribute of it is your address. In the United Kingdom, identity is called NI which is national insurance. Proof of address is a fundamental requirement, a fundamental attribute of that identity ecosystem. In Ghana, it is unfortunate and painful to some of us that have been exposed to various international workshops and capacity building that Ghana has a robust addressing system that Nigeria does not have. Ghana is lucky because the Vice President of Ghana Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, who is a presidential candidate of the New Patriotic Party in Ghana now, is a World Bank-trained economist. He knows the importance and appreciates how important addressing is.

He is the one that has spearheaded the Ghana addressing system. Today, Ghana Card is all you need for everything – you want to vote, you want to procure a passport, name it. At the top of the button, all your information will be displayed. You cannot do anything in Ghana without the Ghana Card and the foundation of Ghan Card is digital addressing property system. In India, arguably they have the biggest identity system all over the world called Aadhaar. It is the world’s largest end-to-end encrypted biometric identity system – 1.3 billion people. Address is a fundamental requirement for you to be enrolled on Aadhaar. In other words, without a physically verifiable address containing demographic information, you will not be enrolled on. The same thing in South Africa. So, why is Nigeria not getting it right?

I should be asking. So, why is Nigeria not getting it right?

Let me say this, and I am pained to say it. Professor Yemi Osibanjo was my lecturer at the University of Lagos. He actually supervised my project on the admissibility of confession under the law of evidence in Nigeria. He was the Vice President when I was a postmaster general, driving the national addressing system. He was the Chair of the National Addressing Council that drove the national addressing system. To be fair to him, when I made my presentation to him regarding electronic stamps and this addressing system, let me quote him, he said, “Postmaster General, let me commend you for the innovation you are bringing to bear in the administration of NIPOST. I am hereby instructing that the Postmaster general be drafted into the digital economy management team of Nigeria driving the digital economy.” One thing led to another.

With due respect to Vice President Osibanjo, he wanted me or directed me that I should come and present the addressing solution to the economic management team whereas all he needed to have done was to direct me to make the presentation to the National Addressing Council. Of course the election came, TraderMoni and all of that took the centre stage and he didn’t have time. He got the second term under President Muhammadu Buhari and another person became the Minister who, at some point, the full story will be told, and I was whimsically removed from office.

Yes, there was some noise then about your removal from office. What happened?

I won’t tell the story now, but the fact remains that it was high-wired politics. I was traded off. But, they did me a favour because if I had not been disengaged, I wouldn’t have had the opportunity of adopting or living by the exaltation of United Nations Development Programme which says in one of its bulletins that the future of public governance will rest on the partnership between the public and the private sector.

I was a private sector player before I became Postmaster General. After I left as Postmaster General, I then decided that why not use a special purpose vehicle representing the private sector and partner with the public sector on a well structured public private partnership. That was what gave birth to Grassroots Address and Identity Network, GAIN, Limited that we are talking about. If I hadn’t been disengaged, the opportunity to use private sector initiative to drive this solution wouldn’t have presented itself.

But how do we get round the Nimc Act which you earlier talked about?

The way to go is that constitutionally, it is the responsibility of the Vice President of Nigeria in his capacity as Chair of the National Addressing Council to decide what to do. I will implore him to allow the Postmaster General, MS Tola Odeyemi, who is a tech savvy, digitally-inclined lady, to drive the national addressing system. We will support her. We will make available our state of the art hyper specific, patented solution to be the foundation upon which the national addressing system can be built under a well structured public and private partnership. That is the foundation, that is the starting point. Nigeria is massive, whether we are going to do it regionally or on a zonal basis or state by state basis, one is very confident and sure that in no distant time, we will cover the whole of Nigeria. Don’t forget when we started GSM, we did it in pilot faces. They didn’t roll out nationwide. Once that is done and we know we have a robust digital addressing system, the national identity number will now be incorporated or rather this addressing system will be the foundation that NIN will ride on.

That will simply mean that we have to review Nimc Act, we look at all other ancillary legislation including NIPOST Act.

There was a postal reform bill sometime ago. How have we gone with that?

There is an urgent need to pass the postal reform bill which I did when I was Postmaster General, but for reasons best known to the former President of Nigeria, Muhammadu Buhari, he did not give his assent to it. These are some of these challenges. Why is Nigeria waging war against itself?

Waging war against itself/ How?

Let me give two instances that would shock and pain you. In my capacity as Postmaster General of Nigeria, I presented these solutions to the then National Security Adviser, General Mongunu (rtd) and he was completely wowed. He fell in love with it. He said that I should get this addressing system incorporated into our postal reform bill at the National Assembly, so that NIPOST can be given the power to give digital addresses to people and also verify the same. Once that is done, we will address it as a critical national infrastructure and fund it. I got the National Assembly, House of Reps under the leadership of then Speaker, Dogara, and the present Chief of Staff, my brother and friend, Femi Gbajabiamila, who was then a majority leader. They passed it without preconditions. The Senate also passed it without preconditions, but alas Mr President neither assented nor declined.

Again, let me say this. I presented a solution on electronic stamps. It was just part of my game-changing products that I introduced at NIPOST. NIPOST has statutory responsibility to produce stamps. Technology has disrupted and we cannot be producing manual stamps anymore, so I invited some tech-savvy, brilliant Nigerians and they came with the solution of electronic stamps, state of the art. I made the presentation to the then Chairman of Revenue Mobilisation, Allocation and Fiscal Commission, RMAFC, he liked it. Of course, we went to the National Assembly, they passed the Finance Act, it was agreed because an inter-ministerial committee was set up consisting of Postmaster General, Central Bank Governor, quite a number of stakeholders. We agreed that NIPOST should be the sole custodian of electronic stamps and stamp duty. Lo and behold, when the Finance Act of that year was passed, overnight they removed NIPOST from it. This was 2018.

Nigeria is waging war against itself and working very hard in the wrong direction.

At the sidelines of the global summit in Saudi Arabia, there was this talk between President Tinubu and Bill Gates about the Modular Open Source Identity Platform, MOSIP. Are you aware of that because it also touched on the issue of identity infrastructure?

Yes, I think Bill Gates was interviewed. He told our President that we have been talking or working with the identity provider, referring to Nimc, but he pointed out that Nimc’s identity base was very scattered. He then informed Mr President that there is a new state of the art addressing solution which is called MOSIP incubated and developed by the International Institute of Technology Development. Bill Gates and Tata of India and some other people funded it and he advised Mr President to adopt it so that Nigeria can use it for seamless and effective determination of tax liability and collection of same.

Let me place it on record, in the MOSIP paper, it is clearly stated that the incubation and development of MOSIP was inspired by the overwhelming success of Aadhaar and address is a very vital component of that identity system, and so, if Nigeria is going to adopt Bill Gates’ MOSIP, let Nigeria not put the cart before the horse, let Nigeria not make the mistake of adopting it and not doing what they did first in India, which means MOSIP must be based on an address. The name of the solution will now be addressed based on identity solution so that we can subscribe to global best practice and stop taking two steps forward and 10 steps backwards.

The Lagos State Government has given a three-month window of amnesty for property owners to ensure proper documentation in terms of physical planning permit for their properties. Now, you have been talking about digital addressing as a major component of identity and you pushed for this while you were in office as postmaster general. How would this fuse into what Lagos State is trying to achieve?

There are some fundamental issues to be resolved. I would wish that Lagos State, being a commercial nerve centre of Nigeria, is truly smart. The way they can do that is to adopt digital addressing solutions so that they can join the league of other African countries who have robust addressing systems. In the Business Insider report of 2023, the first smart cities in Africa are listed. Lagos is number seven, and Abuja is number six. The first five incontrovertibly have digital addressing systems, and that really makes those cities truly smart. In no particular order, I will mention their names: Cape Town in South Africa; Rabat, in Morocco; Algiers, in Algeria; Nairobi, in Kenya; and Cairo, in Egypt. The first five have robust addressing systems. I am not from Lagos State, but Lagos has offered me the platform to truly express myself as a business lawyer and a technology enthusiast. I would wish that Lagos State will leverage on this addressing system in order to live up to what we call peer review mechanism. The same thing is applicable to Abuja. The good news is that we are talking and I am pretty confident that we will be able to work out some kind of relationship with the Lagos State government on this addressing system. It can assist in solving some of the problems that are confronting Lagos State. One such is incessant building collapses. This addressing system is such that we have geomapped and geofenced Lagos State. I think we have about 16 million digital addresses, each with a hyper specific state of the art addressing system encompassing the state, the local government, and the unique identifier. So, our solution is such that we will be embedding digital sensors in houses that are located in areas that are prone to some kind of collapse. Lagos Island, for instance. Community engagements will be deployed. citizens’ information will be enhanced pretty much like a whistle blowing system. The truth of the matter is that the sensor we are talking about has the capacity to measure moisture, temperature, and cracks. In the event of any crack happening in the building, the sensors will trigger a warning because it will be integrated with our system that would be installed on apps in various devices. Messages collected by the sensors will be encrypted and automatically transmitted to a remote server, which in turn will be transmitted to a situation room, and those messages can be quickly decrypted. It’s the remote monitoring of a building in question so that before any harm is done, responders will quickly go there and evacuate people. It is a fantastic solution. It is foolproof. The same solution can be employed to measure potential fire incidents remotely. That is why we said Lagos, being a bellwether state, should leverage on this ubiquitous digital addressing system to find solutions to some of the problems and to enhance the capacity of Lagos State government to deliver on its agenda. Transportation, Agriculture, Education, and Housing. The value chain of this solution is long and truly exponential. We can use it to take people out of poverty, generate employment, and enhance security.

QUOTES

It was Hernando de Soto, a popular Peruvian development economist who once said “without an address, you exist outside of the law, you might as well not exist at all

So, if Nigeria is going to adopt Bill Gates’ MOSIP, let Nigeria not put the cart before the horse, let Nigeria not make the mistake of adopting it and not doing what they did first in India, which means MOSIP must be based on an address