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From Okwe Obi, Abuja
Members of staff of the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), financial institutions, academia, hospitals, and other service providers are to be trained on data capturing of Nigerians.
This was made known by the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Byteworks Technology Solutions Limited, Osuagwu Ezeukwu, in a statement.
The five-day capacity building on the High Availability NIN Verification System will address downtime challenges. The project was conceptualised in 2021 and implemented between 2022 and September 2023, and adoption is ongoing.
According to Ezeukwu, the project is sponsored by MTN and Dell Computers. He stated that different departments and end-user groups of NIMC are participating as part of a longer change management process. This, he added, “will eventually allow the internal users of the system to utilise a resilient and robust [system] to offer NIN verification services for Nigerians.”
Meanwhile, he commended the NIMC Director General, Engr. Bisoye Coker-Odusote, who supported the project and allowed NIMC professionals to have a five-day interaction with the system with the aim of adoption.
He said such supportive efforts will, at the end of the day, make businesses much more sustainable, cheaper to run, and life better for Nigerians in general. Ezeukwu assured the public that his company will always make a linkage between the wellbeing of Nigerians and NIN verification.
He said: “It actually helps in enabling businesses, especially in different industries, ranging from the telecoms, oil and gas, maritime, private sector, [S]tates and local governments.
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“When you have a central system like this that different industries rely on to run their local and specific processes, it is important to make it handle load, to be able to handle traffic. It is easier said than done in practice. This project is making a larger, scalable [system for] industries to support different industries simultaneously.
“So that is the High Availability, and it aims to eradicate or reduce downtime to the minimum. Downtime happens under different circumstances.
“The aim of [the] High Availability System is to prevent downtime so that processes that are critical – think about healthcare processes – and those kinds of processes are critical. We don’t want a system down when somebody’s life is dependent on it. So to build it in such a way [that] it is resilient from downtime, that is the aim of this project.”
He further stated that, “In the past, one or two industries have used this system. Right now, [g]overnment policy direction is making attempts to have a convergence of different industries [to rely] on NIN verification services. As such, we rely on [a] system that would help us, and this [is] what the High Availability NIN Verification System came to achieve.”
Meanwhile, the Byteworks Technology Solutions boss assured Nigerians that their data [are] protected.
“Nigerians’ data are already protected. A verification transaction is very specific; it has to do with saying ‘you are who you are’.
“For instance, if you want to register for a government benefit or admission into a university or college of education, there are instances where your identity needs to be verified to confirm indeed who you say you are. Such are the different use cases for verification.
“It implies that your data is protected; if it [were] not protected, then you cannot be relying on such for verification. So verification is a very specific term used to confirm the identity of persons in distinct processes,” he added.
