I can’t imagine how many places we do submit data virtually on daily basis in Nigeria! The worst of them all is that of telecommunication companies, you will think they are the most sophisticated firms which you can bank on when it comes to accurate data keeping, but such thought had been found invalid in Nigeria over time, the companies are the worst when it comes to data banking.
I can’t remember how many times I have queued in their offices (telecommunication offices), even yourself, out of our tightest schedule, capturing our data with biometric. You buy SIM, you register and get your data captured; you lose SIM, you do the same to get a welcome back SIM; migrating from 3G to 4G, you go back to re-capture your data; linking your SIM with your NIN is another data capturing palaver and so on and on.
You begin to wonder if at all any data of you and I is kept anywhere on their database or if this is how they work in other climes where there is a working system, where the appropriate government agencies in charge are really and operationally in charge! Upon all, the kidnappers cannot yet be tracked successfully with the lines they use to call with all the data captured!
They normally take advantage of the systemless situation of the country and negligence of the regulatory bodies in the nation; building impunitively on the lack of proper regulation from the appropriate quarters to frustrate their supposed esteemed customers.
You can’t imagine most times when you even sacrificed your limited time to visit their offices so that you could activate your barred line or reclaim your lost SIM and you were told by the INTERNET PROVIDING companies that there was no network, then you began to wonder which planet was Nigeria sef!
One may now begin to ask question on why we couldn’t maintain the first data captured while registering our newly bought SIM for the subsequent operations and uses.
Go to bank, your data are captured million times! You submit data for opening a savings account; opening current account in the same bank, you re-capture the same data; want to collect ATM card, some data of you are also gathered; go for re-issuance of another ATM card, you are asked to fill another set of forms for data; registering for BVN, you queue eternally to submit data and on and on like that.
Now, to the grand national menace of data flaw – the voter’s card, NIN and the international passport! I cannot remember how many times different agencies of government had captured my data all in the name of issuing me voter’s card, national identity PAPER and the international passport.
Must we continue to spend so much on data sourcing without a central database or data centre? Can anyone prove it wrong that this is not intentional on the part of the government so that some monsters can continue to feed fat on the “national cake” at the detriment of the national economy and commoners’ resources?
You will do biometric for voter’s card, do biometric for NIN, do biometric for international passport, all for the same Nigeria! Could it be that our fingers are changing or metamorphosing with time? And upon all the data and biometric capturings, the NIMC still fails to indicate on the paper issued to us and perhaps in their database the disability status of people living with disabilities; the more reason the federal government and other government strata cannot do some planning correctly and selectively. So, if any palliative is meant for the people living with disabilities now, they will still need to go and queue to submit “palliative data”, then what exactly is working here in Nigeria?
Logically and sanely speaking, one should expect that NIMC should be the central custodian of the populace data and statistics, but unfortunately, there is no central coordinating database of such to harvest the data by different institutions and parastatals going by all illustrated above; the reason civil servants who were already out of the country are still collecting their salaries in collaboration with some government official evil (civil) servants, building on our dataless and malfunctioning system.
Ask the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) or Nigerian Bureau of Statistics how many old people, how many people living with disabilities, students, employed people, unemployed people, farmers, artisans, people living below poverty line, civil servants, entrepreneurs/self-employed people, etc. are there in the country per time; there will be no close-to-accurate data to supply to that effect but rather a guess work based on some sectional researchers’ findings as perhaps collaboratively involved at some point in time.
To finally spoil the whole show and prove to the world that we are really not yet getting it right in terms of central data system, a government agency with supposed echelon of experts announced recently that Nigerians would be carrying four different cards for identity and different transactions; if this was not originally a rumour or a joke, the agency concerned should safely tag it so and close such a regressive and unpatriotic plan forthwith.
There is no reason we cannot use our national ID card (not the present paper some of us are carrying) to operate different banks’ ATM and likewise for other official transactions and uses, while we have the international passport separately.
We get it wrong from the cradle when no proper data of the new born babies are taken until there is need for such, and affidavit of any kind will do. Even any road side letter writer most times issues affidavits certifying births of different species of adults for official documentation!
Don’t you now think we need to query ourselves on where we normally get our prided exaggerated population statistics of 250 million or thereabouts from? Is this figure not actually based on assumption of how we visualise multitude of moving human heads while standing on the top of Oshodi bridge in Lagos or we are actually being sincere with sustainable data? Though I doubt the latter.
