Connectnigeria Articles

Every Nigerian who has an International Passport, a Driving Licence, a National Identity Card, a Voter Registration Card and has to register a new SIM card, has been through separate biometric registration for each, at different times and location. This has been the case, and has given opportunity to some, to falsify information, or led to non-Nigerians to illegally take possession of one of the above – under certain circumstances.

Government has been seeking ways to aggregate all the information, so that, whenever there is a personal or general need for any, individual data will be downloaded from the data bank and used to prepare it. An IT organization, Dragnet Solutions, is looking to make this possible for the government, collaborating with a UK Biometric firm, Warwick Warp (UK) Limited.

They are commencing the project from the private sector, and hope to extend it – everywhere, in Nigeria and through West Africa — in the coming years. Speaking on the project, the MD of Dragnet Solutions, Robert Ikhazoboh, said, “At Dragnet Solutions, we are noted for our bouquet of innovative products and services that are carefully designed to address seemingly intractable challenges. In Nigeria, for instance, the National Identity Card scheme has been hampered by different issues and there seems to it for now.”

He continued, “The Centralised Biometric Identity Database is, therefore, the solution to the identity verification problem of the country. We are partnering a renowned Warwick Warp to deliver this solution. We will start with some private organisations like educational institutions, oil companies, among others that handle a lot of data in the course of their businesses, and we also plan to extend it to the public sector later.”