The Director General of the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), Engr. Aliyu Aziz Abubakar, has offered the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) access to its database of Nigerians captured under the national identity card programme.
Engr. Abubakar made this offer during a courtesy visit to the Commission’s headquarters recently. He said that the visit was aimed at focusing on the mutual interests of both agencies, and that sharing its database with ICPC would boost the work of the Commission by helping it in the identification of suspects.
Speaking in line with the DG NIMC’s offer, the Acting Chairman of ICPC Dr. Musa Usman Abubakar cited instances where the Commission had had difficulties unravelling the identities of owners of properties in proceeds-of-crime investigations, and stated that NIMC’s gesture would make it difficult for individuals to deny ownership of certain assets.
The NIMC boss added that the idea of the agency was to provide a platform through which people could be easily identified and traced even in cases of business transactions noting that because of its authenticity the NIMC identity card is well-recognised, and so far there are about 32 million people captured in the database.
He further explained that the organisation generates a National Identity Number (NIN), for registered citizens and non-citizens resident in Nigeria, and that the NIN database would be harmonized with all other identity databases to simplify the work of law enforcement agencies in tackling problems of insecurity in the country.
Engr. Abubakar also said that NIMC had put measures in place to prevent corruption in the National Identity Card Programme using the NIMC Act No. 23, 2007 and ICPC enabling law.
The ICPC Acting Chairman expressed the Commission’s gratitude and readiness to take full advantage of the inter-agency collaboration.