Nigeria’s Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo has disclosed that to achieve the digital national identity for all citizens, the National Identity Management Commission would need an additional $3.1 billion.
The Vice President, who stated this at the stakeholder workshop on Strategic Roadmap for Digital Identity, Eco-system in Nigeria, also revealed that Nigeria spent $, based on the 1.2 billion since the 1970s on the project, on a World Bank research on 2015.
“Nigeria will have to spend additional $3.1 billion to develop a full identity for all Nigerians,” Osinbajo who was represented by Senior Special Assistant to the President on ICT, Mr Lanre Osibona said.
He admitted that the major challenge facing identity programme is the lack of a working record system and practical approaches, disclosing that changes had been made to the process of enrolling on the digital national identity to ease the procedure, which included reduction of identity attributes from 75 to 10.
According to him, the gains of digital identity would mean the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) would easily enforce traffic offenses through unified identity system and bank transaction would also become easier.