The Federal Government has introduced digital tokens to replace the National Identity Number (NIN). This was disclosed by the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Isa Pantami during a workshop organized by the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) in Abuja.
The replacement which will take effect from January 2022 is to ensure the privacy of users’ personal information and reduce cases of illegal retrieval, usage, transfer and storage of NIN as no third party may carry out any verification without the knowledge of the NIMC.
The virtual NIN is issued by the ID holder who has participated in the NIMC MobileID application or generated through the USSD service.
Just like in the banking sector, the virtual NIN is entity specific and expires after 72 hours which means a token generated for company A cannot be used for another company.
Pantami said that anonymization was also catered for with the attachment of the UserID of the verifier to every verification request. He added that the new policy implies that no NIN, no verification.
