By Emmanuel Elebeke

The Federal Government has warned all its Ministries, Departments and Agencies, MDA’s, to take the directive on harmonisation of identity management systems seriously because it forms the bedrock of the country’s plans to accelerate socio-economic development to remain globally competitive.

Senator Anyim Pius Anyim

The warning was contained in the directive presented to the MDAs by the Secretary to the Government, Senator Anyim Pius Anyim in Abuja last week.

Titled ‘Presidential Directive on the Alignment of Data Capture, Verification and Authentication activities in government ministries, departments and agencies,’ Anyim said there was need for a single version of truth on all personal information in the national Identity database, which all the MDAs can rely upon.

He added that the future of such infrastructure lies in the collaborative efforts of all the  stakeholders.

The SGF said since the Federal government believes that since Nigeria is a global player in the new world, where systems evolve every day, there was no other option than to deploy the sophisticated modern technologies to make it indispensable in global market.

He tasked all government ministries, departments and agencies to take up the challenge of ensuring a seamless harmonization of the ongoing national identity management scheme to give Nigerians a world class identity management infrastructure.

For Anyim, “the integration of diverse data capture processes and seemingly ubiquitous databases in MDAs is an idea which time is overdue. The deployment of a seamless system of identity data capture and its management in a unique manner has become a national challenge, which must be addressed properly to realize the harmonization goal of the present administration.

“The establishment, management and multiplication of identity databases in the past by different government agencies no doubt served their purposes but managing them in various demography unique to these MDAs made the data overlapping and burdensome to government.

“In a changing world, systems evolve every day. With sophisticated modern technology and a competitive global environment, Nigeria as a global player has no choice but to use identity management as a reliable tool of accelerating socio-economic development,” he added.

Anyim however warned the MDAs that the presidency will neither entertain excuses and analyses on why the policy cannot work nor listen to why more time is needed to adopt the directive or even any justification why every MDA should have its own separate database.