BY OSCARLINE ONWUEMENYI

The Federal Government is in the process of working with an Italy-based company, Dermo Impex Italy, to create a citizens database to be known as the Basic Registry and Information System in Nigeria, BRISIN.
Already, the company has launched a pilot scheme with the Federal Capital Territory administration to initiate the project, which is expected to spread across the 36 states.

Speaking to journalists in Abuja, the Managing Director of Dermo Impex Nigeria Limited, Dr. Anthony Uwa, said the project, when fully implemented over the next eight years, has the capacity to create over 10 million direct and indirect jobs for Nigerians.

He said, “We are working with the Nigerian government to build infrastructure which has been lacking since independence, and which should form the basis for any policy institutional development of the country.
“We are talking about a holistic and fundamental approach to nation building, which would help the country develop from the grassroots and create more than 10 million jobs within the next eight years.”
He added that millions of employment opportunities would be created “from the day the system is flagged off. An employment database is being organized so that government and citizens would know where jobs exist, or are lacking, and only those in the database will get the jobs. These will enable government at all levels to know how many jobs are created and where.”

Uwa explained that, “BRISIN is an integrated system for the collection, storage and distribution of information to support the management of the economy. It is an infrastructural system built to give solid foundation for technological and socio-economic development of the nation.

“The technology facilitates and guarantees regular and continuous assessment and management of the population as well as the economy and the administrative institutions in the country.”

According to him, BRISIN is “designed in a way that will house databases of residents and activities in each ward linked to the server at the Local government headquarters, and the databases in each local government area is linked to server in the state, which in turn will be linked to the central server at the Federal level to achieve an integrated system.”

This way, he added, information on citizens could therefore be obtained either at ward, local government, state or Federal level.

He further said, “For more than 50 years, Nigerian leaders have tried to build without a solid foundation. The system we are introducing is what makes a state; it has helped the Western world to develop by creating orderliness, planned economy and excellent social services.
“The system entails building the grassroots data and information infrastructure that will help the policy makers to correctly identify the position, occupation and other relationships of every Nigerian living in the country.
“Until we create this integrated system from the grassroots for correct data cum information, we will find it hard to develop as expected,” he added.

Uwa added that the technology would also be deployed in the fight against crime and corruption, noting that “BRISIN comes with a biometric data of every person, not only Nigerians, but every person residing in Nigeria.

“Fighting corruption is one of the basic goals of BRISIN. Security agents in the country will have adequate and correct data and information to run their activities. In this way, issues of illegal migration, human trafficking and such other crimes will be tackled more effectively.”