Plans Underway to Replace BVN with NIN – FG

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Obiajulu Joel Nwolu

Obiajulu Joel Nwolu is an established writer at africannewstoday.com. He is passionate about African affairs. He loves writing about interesting facts relating to the African continent and enjoys sharing his knowledge with others.

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Dr Isa Pantami, the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy has said the Federal Government plans to phaseout Bank Verification Numbers, NIN, and replace it with National Identity Numbers.

Pantami disclosed this while interacting with reporters after taking a tour and inspecting the ongoing NIN enrolment exercise at NIMC and other designated centres in Abuja.

The minister stated that he had presented it to the National Economic Sustainability Committee and drew the attention of the Central Bank of Nigeria’s Governor on the need to replace BVN with NIN.

He said the BVN is a regulator’s policy, while NIN is a law.

He said, “The strength of the law wherever you go is not the same with a policy of one institution.’’

According to the minister, the BVN was only applicable to those who had a bank account while NIN was for every citizen and a legal resident in the country.

He added, “BVN is our secondary database, while NIN and the database is the primary one in the country that each and every institution should make reference to NIMC.”

Pantami boasted that Nigeria was at the forefront in Africa in regard to data protection regulations, claiming that the level of security in the entire database was 99.9 per cent.

He said, “That is why we came up with the Nigeria Data Protection Regulation that we always enforce and this is applicable to the database at our disposal.

“We take care of it and make sure that security is excellent and we don’t allow anybody to compromise the content because it is a trust from our citizens given to us.’’

Justifying the engagement of private agents for the NIN enrolment, the minister said the move was in line with the global standard.