Juliet Damilola

The Federal Government has introduced a suite of digital Tokens to replace the National Identification Number (NIN) slip and polycarbonate card.

Isa Pantami, the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, said this at stakeholders workshop on the National Identification Number (NIN) Tokenization Solution organised by National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) in Abuja.

He explained that the solution was adopted to ensure privacy of personal identifiable information of individuals during verification transactions.

It will also reduce incidences of illegal retrieval, usage, transfer, and storage of NIN.

Pantami, who was represented by the Director-General of NIMC, Aliyu Abubakar said the f implementation begins on Jan. 1.

“One of the benefits of the virtual NIN is to ensure no third party may carry out any verification, hiding behind a proxy (and without the knowledge of the NIMC, being the Custodian of Identity). And also generated Token or Virtual NIN is unintelligent, completely random with no correlation to the NIN and cannot be reverse engineered, even by a Quantum Computer.

“The NIN holder is the only exclusive issuer of NIN and cannot be delegated, “Pantami said.

He said anonymization was also catered for with the attachment of the UserID of the verifier to every verification request, adding that no NIN, no verification.

Abubakar said NIN tokens are MDA or merchant specific and expire after a set period of time, saying that a token generated for company A cannot be utilized by company B.

“We must continue to reinforce the need for every Nigerian to have a digital identity,

irrespective of social class or economic status, improve access to all and ensure continuous protection of privacy and data of our citizens and other enrollees. ”Also, we must sustain the momentum by creating continuous awareness programs and sensitizing of the public. NAN