The Digital Public Ecosystem: Identity, Trust, and Inclusive Access in the Digital Economy

Increasing the volume. Yes. Good morning. Perfect. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you once again for your patience as we begin this session. It is our honor to host you today on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly as we have this very important discussion on the digital public ecosystem, identity, trust, and inclusive access in the digital economy. My name is Fola Olatunji David. I am not your MC. Your MC is figuring out access by the gate, along with so many of our guests. As you may have noticed, getting into the United Nations HQ today was a bit of a hassle. We've been blessed, I would like to say that, with these challenges every year for the last three years. The first year, I believe, we had President Netanyahu. Last year, we had Zelensky. And this year, we have the biggest of them all, President Trump, speaking at the same time with our event. But nonetheless, we're going to have a very important dialogue. Thank you once again for everyone who has braved the crowd and the security to be here. nonetheless, our special guests, you are all special guests. But as the event goes on, we'll continue to make recognition to everyone who's been here. So without further ado, I would like to pass the the honors of welcoming us on behalf of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. the vice president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Senator Kashem Shatima, who is ably represented by the deputy chief of staff to the president, the person of Senator Hadija, for his welcome remarks. Please put your hands together for him.

Uh thank you very much everyone on behalf of his excellency the vice president. who would love to be here and who had committed to do the opening remarks. But unfortunately, this is coming at a time when the opening session is also taking place. So he's right next door, but he's asked me to come down and read the opening remarks on his behalf. The office of the vice president has been working very closely with NIMC on a lot of initiatives, from the addressing council to.

Ease of doing business.

So the progress over the last few years has been a very keen interest to the office, and we've been collaborating to get to this stage. So without much ado, I'll read his opening remarks. Distinguished delegates, UN visitors, heads of government agencies, development partners, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen. It is a great honor to join you today on behalf of His Excellency, the Vice President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, at this important conversation on digital identity, trust, and inclusive access in the digital economy.

Let me begin by commending the Director.

General of the National Identity Management Commission, Engineer Dr. Abisheko Odusote and her team. for convening this important event and for their continued efforts to strengthen Nigeria's identity ecosystem. In the new world order, digital identity is no longer simply about establishing who we are. It has increasingly become the foundation through which citizens access public services, participate in the digital economy, benefit from financial inclusion, and engage meaningfully with governments and its institutions. Nigeria has taken a significant step forward with the enactment of the NIMC Act 2026, which provides a modern legal framework for a secure, interoperable, and trusted identity ecosystem. The Act also positions NIMC strategically within Nigeria's emerging digital public infrastructure and digital trust architecture by making it the root certification authority with explicit oversight over DPI and PKI. At this point, I would once again like to commend Dr. Abishoye and her team for repositioning NIMC and addressing the legacy issues around interoperability and fragmented verification that paved the way for the massive scaling of registration we have seen in the last few years. This aligns strongly with the global ambition reflected in the UN Sustainable Development Goals particularly the commitment to provide legal identity for all, while ensuring the digital transformation remains inclusive and leaves no one behind. For Nigeria, our ambition is clear, to build a digital public ecosystem where identity, trust, payments, data, and digital services work together to improve the lives of citizens and unlock opportunities for business. Achieving this will require strong collaboration between governments, the private sector, development partners, academia, and international organizations. No country can build an inclusive digital future alone. I therefore look forward to the discussions today and to strengthening partnerships that can support Nigeria and the wider African continent in building secure, inclusive, and people-centered digital public infrastructure. Once again, I commend NIMC for organizing this important event, and I wish us all a very productive and impactful discussion. Thank you, and I wish you a successful event.

Behalf of, thank you very much. We thank you kindly on behalf of his excellency, the vice president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Senator Kashim Shetima, and we appreciate those remarks, and at this juncture, it is my absolute pleasure to welcome you officially to what is the beginning of what is certainly going to be a wonderful engagement. I'm apparently working on New York time. My name is Bimbai Mutini Ekweong. currently wearing a double barrel hat as we're chasing up after Donald Trump, who is currently addressing the General Assembly and making sure Nigeria is connected with all of the developments that are happening here. But as this is a revolutionary moment in Nigeria's digital infrastructure, it was important for us to put a comma and a pause on the geopolitics and bring this conversation not just to the UN General Assembly, but to the world about the huge inroads that Nigeria is currently making to ensure that our digital infrastructure, our digital identity backbone, the DNA around it is well grounded, well established, ready for the world, but specifically ready for Nigeria. What does this mean? It means financial inclusivity. It means security. It means a robust judicial system. It means so much for inclusive growth and economic development. And with the signing of the NIMC Act 2026, we know that the framework that has been reworked and is now officially being taken to the world is certainly going to take Nigeria's growth, Nigeria's trajectory to another level. So without further ado, we've got some of our brightest voices representing Nigeria in the room today. And they're certainly much more qualified to speak on the impact that we know that the NIMC Act 2026 and this new era of the National Identity Management Commission will make. So I introduce Honorable Abike Dabiri Erewa, who is the CEO of Nigerians in Diaspora Commission. She's going to give us some of our opening remarks for the day and give us more light as to the importance of this new digital infrastructure that we are now paving forward with. So, Honorable Abike Dabiri Erewa. Welcome, good morning, and please do take it away with your remarks.

Thank you very much, and we welcome our emcee.

Right? Oh, my goodness. I'm not sure I'll live this one down.

But we understand it's been tough out there getting here, but we're glad you finally made it. Good morning. Is it morning? I was in Nigeria time. Good morning. The deputy chief of staff, our brother, a friend, a very reliable gentleman that I know, representing his excellency, the vice president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, ehm, his excellency, Shetim, Kashim Shetima, represented by Senator Adeja, good morning my brother, and thank you for your wonderful speech. My sister, Bisoye, who has changed the face of identification in Nigeria through all the you do. She had a very successful identity day in Abuja. Really very successful. I will appreciate. And all and all the NIMC team. Another brother of mine, DJ Nasemi, he's smiling because he knows he did something wrong. And I'm leaving him back in New York. Thank you very much. I brought the prof, doctor. Also nice to see you here. Good morning. And I pay my respect and compliments to everyone including Flutterwave, Binga. One of our Nigerians who makes us very proud. We use you as an example. When I was in Silicon Valley, you were number one on my list. Thank you very much. And I welcome all of you to this very important summit. I'm Abike Dabiri-Anyawara, I chair the Diaspora Commission. And the Diaspora Commission is an agency of government set up to engage, empower, and get Nigerians in the diaspora to be part of the programs and policies of the federal government of Nigeria. And I'm proud to say that in the last seven years or so, we are succeeding in doing that. The first thing is to build that trust and make you know that, you know what, you can trust your government, you can trust the commission, and we can work together. I was at a Dangote event yesterday, and the yearning for the diaspora to be part of the continent is huge. So we have to ensure that we engage and have you, particularly the younger generation, let's feel your impact. back home on the continent. So for all you have in Nigerians here, if you haven't been coming home, I hope you come home this December. If you haven't been investing, I hope you'll invest. And most importantly, I'm sure you all have your name. But thanks to NIMC, they make the job easier for us with the Diaspora Commission. In the past, it was always complaints, complaints, complaints. We want to do this, we can't get it done. But NIMC, under your leadership, has simplified the process. So my job has been made easier. And that is because for Nigerians in the diaspora, we have a desk at NIMC. When there's any complaint, it is solved instantly. If anybody has a problem here, please let us know, but I'm sure nobody does. Again, also with the passport under Mr. President's leadership, it's getting much better to get your passport, to renew your passport. If there are problems, let us know, we communicate with the right agencies. So really, the idea is that we're working with NIMC So Nigerians in the diaspora, we look forward to engaging further with you, you know, knowing what it is you want us to do more. But the most important thing is that we all have to work together to build our dear country, Nigeria, particularly under the leadership of President Bola Metin. But no matter how long you stay here in America, home will always be home. And we hope that, I can see Mimi there, we work together a lot too, Rwanda, US. No matter what, home will always be home. What kind of home do you want to return to? What kind of a Nigeria do you want to build? Mr. President can't do it alone. We can't do it alone. In America alone, amongst Nigerian doctors, 70% of black doctors are Nigerians. In the Silicon Valley, Nigerians run the show there, from Nvidia to Google to Facebook. Young Nigerians making waves. But you know what? No matter how far a river flows, you can't cut off from your source. So let's work together. You have a structure and agency to help us make that connection. So we have the Diaspora Day, the Diaspora Investment Forum. We had a huge event in Canada recently. Nigerians are coming home to invest. Nigerians are coming home to be part of the progress and development of their country. I appeal to all of you to do the same. We are your embassy in Nigeria. And through NIMC, working with NIMC, we also have improved our database of Nigerians in the diaspora. Before it was so low, but now it's-- It's millions there. More than 142 million. Yes, more than 142 million now. I will ask for NIMSE again. So thank you very much. I look forward to a very great outing here. And once more, thank you all for being here. And thank you, NIMSE, for putting this together. Thank you very much.

Honourable Abike Awa, somebody I really have such fond regard for because of her broadcast background, but beyond her broadcast background, she's shared some statistics and I want to buttress some of the points that she's made. When we track the diaspora remittances, we're close to the $1 billion per month goal of remittances coming in from the diaspora into Nigeria. Now, when you track that and you put that in the context of the conversation we're having here, you get to see the economic potential, the business potential. There's a case to be made there for a diaspora community that is able to rally a billion dollars a month back home. Those are the official statistics from the Central Bank of Nigeria. So the target is 1 billion, but I believe we're currently sitting at about $947 million per month that's coming home to Nigeria. So a huge conversation to be had with the Diaspora Commission. Now it's time for us to take a look at NIMC's journey and progress report. You know, earlier I spoke a little bit about the new act that has been introduced and how that act will revolutionize the work that NIMC is now able to do, gives NIMC a greater scope, and of course, modernizes the framework that Nigeria manages data with. So it is an absolute pleasure for me to introduce the coordinating director for operations of the National Identity Management Commission, Ms. Uche Chigbo.

Good morning, everyone. Your excellency, the Vice President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Senator Kashim Shatima, GCON, ably represented by the Deputy Chief of Staff, my DG, Engineer Abisoya Kuka Odusote, CEO, Nigeria in Diaspora, distinguished dignitaries, special guests, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Uche Nwachibor. I serve as the Coordinating Director of Operations at the National Identity Management Commission. It's my privilege to stand before this distinguished audience and on behalf of my Director General and Chief Executive Officer to share the progress and growth of our commission. The theme of this General Assembly is restoring of trust, and that is a fitting place for us to begin. The challenge before NIMC in accelerating digital identity has been enormous, but through dedication, commitment, teamwork, resilience, We have deepened collaboration with our stakeholders. We've expanded our reach. We have strengthened enrollment and verifications. We've embraced technology. We have re-engineered our business processes and improved our service delivery. The story of NIMC over the past three years has been a story of transformation. Today, we can look back and say with confidence that Nigeria's identity landscape has changed. Permit me to share that story. In the area of enrollment at national scale, under the leadership of His Excellency, the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, GCFR, and the direction of our Director General, Engineer Bisoye Koka Odusote, and with the support of our front-end partners and staff across all 37 states, our NIN enrollment has surpassed 142 million records and is still counting. This has made Nigeria home to the largest identity database in Africa and arguably the fourth largest in the world. What we have is 142 million people issued legal identity empowered to exercise their basic rights and participate in the economy. In terms of our assets and diaspora reach, we have grown our NIN enrollment centers to over 8,000 across our six geopolitical zones in the country, with over 32,000 agents trained and certified for data capture. For our diaspora, we have over 1,167 enrollment centers across six continents, covering 98 countries, where citizens can enroll and obtain their national identification number. In reaching the last mile registration through an initiative from the president, called the World Level Enrollment Initiative. We carried identity services into 8,809 wards across the 774 local government areas, bringing enrollment to communities that have never hosted a DEX before. More than 6,700 wards have been visited so far, and we were able to capture 10 million enrollments in six months as we started in February 2026. The project continues because we have a target to reach at least 95% of the population by December 2026. A landmark reform that happened in the commission is the NIMC Act 2026, signed into law in June 2026. Through it, the commission is now positioned as Nigeria's foundational digital authority, the regulator of the identity ecosystem, and a national digital trust anchor. The act establishes the legal basis for our digital public infrastructure and the public key infrastructure with NIMC as the root certification authority. Within two weeks of the law signing, our leadership carried out engagements across 33 ministries, departments, and agencies to educate them on the impact of the act and that journey continues with the state government, other agencies, and even down to the grassroots level. Guided by a transformational strategy built on three pillars, people, process, and technology, we now process close to 1.9 million record modifications digitally through our self-service portal. This has cut the turnaround for updates and data corrections to 24 to 48 hours, and removed queues in all our centers. In the area of database capacity and modernization, we expanded the national identity database from a ceiling of 100 million to 250 million records and upgraded our verification and application platforms to the latest version so that the commission is ready for the growing population. On the security and global standards, For stronger information security and database integrity, we have consistently achieved and expanded our international certifications. Recently, we were recertified on ISO 27000 2022 Information Security Management System. We've also been certified for Privacy Information Management System, ISO 27701 2025. and the business continuity management system ISO 22301 2019. These were achieved alongside an enhanced cyber defense system and AI driven detection of fraudulent transactions. For the record, our national identity database has recorded no breach in the past three years. And every member of staff from our headquarters in Abuja to the local level have been trained and certified in data protection and privacy. This goes to show that we practice the rules we enforce. We have also built and rolled out a tool that we call NIN authentication, which is currently named NIN Auth. This has scaled verification to roughly 3.3 million transactions a day. It gives citizens their mobile identity on the go with consent-based disclosures. They have access to free name slip, a shareable verification code, and links to their tax ID, national health insurance number, and credit information. The citizens, not the state, decides who sees their data using the tool. In the area of integration across government, Our name integration and verification now runs across various services. SIM registration, taxation, passport issuance and renewal, examinations, pensions, company registration, and social interventions. A total of over 14 ministries, departments, and agencies have been successfully integrated into the national identity system. For citizen experience, we have implemented a world-class contact center and introduced a service charter defining clear service timelines. We added a toll-free support line, an AI chatbot, an e-ticketing system for case management, and a QR code-enabled feedback. This allows the citizens to interact with us and for us to resolve their issues as quickly as possible. In the area of financial and social inclusion, we have revitalized our multipurpose card on Nigeria's AfriGo payment scheme and strengthened government to person payments using the name as the unique identifier. Our new electronic ID card will be launched this year following a successful pilot. As an institution, we have also fully automated our finance and human capital processes. moving to a purposeless administration. And we've also added a learning management system, an automated performance and appraisal system for all staff appraisal. For the first time in our history, all 3,000 members of staff spread across 36 states and 774 local government areas were trained in leadership, strategy, management, and with the training also cascaded to every level of the workforce, including our drivers. In terms of collaboration with National Population Commission, we have begun issuing the name at birth to newborns through the integration of the civil registration system with the national identity system. We have also established a modern audiovisual studio so that the talent in NIMC can produce the commission's communication content. Most of the podcasts and videos that you see on our website are produced at our studio. Distinguished guests, behind every name is a person. Behind every successful authentication is someone whose identity has been established with greater certainty. Behind every enrollment center is a community brought closer to the formal system. And behind every one of these achievements is a workforce that has continued to serve, innovate, and deliver. NIMC has changed. And NIMC has also changed the conversation about identity. That conversation is known about access, inclusion, security, trust, economic opportunity. And increasingly, it is about the digital public infrastructure upon which Nigeria's future will be built. The journey, however, it's not far from over. The millions who remain outside the system are our next responsibility. The communities that are in hard to reach area are our next frontier. And the new NIMC Act is simply not a new law, it is an expanded mandate and a higher level of expectation. We share this success story with humility and confidence because what we are building is bigger than an institution. We are building the trust infrastructure of a nation, an identity system that says to every person, you matter, you can be recognized, you can be counted, you can be included, and you can participate. To all our stakeholders, our partners, and our fellow nations gathered here, We want to say with trusted identity, we can deliver better, we can secure better, we can govern better, and we can build better. The foundation has been strengthened, the ambition is bigger, and NIMC is ready for the next chapter. Thank you all, and I wish us all a productive engagement.

Compelling charge and a truly formidable account of reform that is not only said with words but is being felt at the very basic level of interaction in Nigeria. So a huge congratulations to NIMC. for choosing to pioneer a new era in Nigeria's digital identity infrastructure. It's now time for us to really unpack in great detail what this means for the average person, what it means for access, and what it means for real service delivery. So we're going to get into the panel session of our morning, and the first panel is titled Identity in Action and Access to the Digital Economy. So it's my great pleasure to introduce Senator Ibrahim Hassan Hadeja, who's Deputy Chief of Staff to the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Mr. Kashifu Inua Abdullahi CCIE, who's the Director General, CEO, National Information Technology Development Agency. Ms. Princess Adiremi Adebawale, National Coordinator, Renewed Hope National Homegrown School Feeding Program. Mr. Olugbenga Agbala, co-founder and CEO of Flutterwave. And this panel will be expertly navigated by Dewura Oladepo, the executive director, Technology for Social Change and Development. So if we're all set to get into this conversation, the title, just as a reminder, Identity in Action and Access to the Digital Economy. Dewura, you may go ahead.

Alright, great. Good morning, everyone. It's a pleasure to be here moderating this panel. I wanted, before going into, and it's my honor to have such wonderful people on the panel today. Um before going right into the questions for for the panel, I was going to start with sharing a little story of my recent thoughts on verifiable identity. So, just like everyone over the last few days or earlier this week, we all know that there was an IPO in Nigeria which everybody is pretty much talking about. So, I was one of those people trying to buy shares. on a particular platform. And so I had to log in my details of course because the platform needed my details and I had to wait for about three days to get verified before I could buy those shares. And you know whilst I sat for three days refreshing the app like a million times to see if I was good to go. Um it gave me a thought to say If I could be here, you know, waiting for my data to be verified to get access to shares that I wanted to buy, then think about how that is being done like across board, across multiple agencies, departments, across the country. and the importance of having your data verified before you know you could go through a process like this because imagine that I bought the shares and then it wasn't really me but it was somebody else that did that in my name and then person was taking away my dividends that would not be great and so that just brought me so I was I was preparing for this panel I thought about that very actively and it gave me a renewed sense of why the conversation on verifiable identity is quite important I'm sure there's nobody here that would want anyone to use their data without their consent in a situation very similar to this. And this leads me to my very first question to Senator Osa. And this question basically is the fact that as Deputy Chief of Staff, you know, in charge of coordinating ministries, departments and agencies, pretty much MDAs, and you know the responsibility of course around handling identity for this MDAs ehm sort of passes through user. Where do you see that verified identity? Works the most or should be improved in access to public services.

Well, thank you very much. Uh I think Nigeria has had a very ambitious target in terms of.

Adopting an e-governance infrastructure. We've been at it for the last, I believe, almost 15 years when we joined the Open Governance Forum.

And over time, we've kept on shifting the targets because of issues around actualizing that.

And one of the key issues, one of the key problems was the identity situation. What you had before, before the reenactment of the NIMC Act, before the innovations we have seen NIMC come up with, was identity, having a footprint in almost four or five different agencies. So you have NIN, if you are going to do a passport, it's the same data set that you gave. BNP, BVN, opening a bank account, and so on and so forth. And that has impaired the capacity of government to actually roll out the e-governance targets to achieve that. What you have seen with the re-enactment of the act and essentially giving NIMC full powers and oversight over.

Some of those things.

You now have one central depository. You have one agency that is responsible for that. And they have created such a robust platform that almost anyone could just plug in and play, not just the public sector, but the private sector. So we have a situation now with the identity issue resolved, then from a service delivery perspective, the public sector knows where you are. They can reach out to you. They can offer services. You can complain about the kind of services you are getting.

And so on and so forth.

And then of course ah private sector is not a surprise to sleep flutter away here. When we have our addressing council meetings, all of them come up. Ah because once you resolve identity and addressing, you open up a vista for e-commerce. And that ah essentially improves the ah capacity to bring you more customers. Already we have a very robust robust e-commerce situation in the country. But of course ah it is ah ah expanding despite constraints. Imagine a situation now where, you know, if you buy anything online in Nigeria, essentially.

Doing so at your own risk.

Uh, in terms of identity. Yes, there are good stories but there are also some horrible stories out there. Uh, another challenge of course is like I said earlier in my speech, we've been working on them on the addressing issue. The the vice president shares the addressing council. Essentially trying to create a robust addressing system in Nigeria. that will resolve the last mile issues that have also been hampering e-commerce. It's one thing to buy something online. It's another to actually have it delivered to where you are. Uh banks are battling with ah know your customer issues. Ah you know I can give them one address today and then tomorrow I move. With ah the infrastructure that ah NIMC has in place, you know, everything is so robust and dynamic. And then you can be able to resolve all these issues you know, and like I said, have a situation where the public e-governance initiatives, you know, essentially will pick up in pace and, you know, detour to the private sector and e-commerce. So it's at the root of almost all the other digital initiatives, you know. Once you resolve what they've done, you know, once you focus on what they have done in terms of the addressing in terms of the mandate that they now have under the new regulatory environment. I think we are going to see, you know, I mean, imagine them moving from, God knows what, 100 and 400, this is going to also play out across all the other sectors as you go along.

Thank you very much, sir. My next question will be to Princess Adewalema. So we just to provide some bit of context because I was going to assume that everybody in the new in the room knew that NIMC and the renewed Hope School Feeding Program were working on to answer but I would I would provide some just slight context on that. So just for the benefits of other people in the room. So NIMC and the renewed Hope School Feeding Program they have a partnership where Nimsee is helping to support, um, the young people who are going through the school feeding program, uh, with access to neem, um, and this is ultimately… done or is being done to ensure that there is accountability and trust within the system and ensure that you know they are not ghost people who are taking charge or taking taking benefits that actually you know is not being used. And so my question to you Ma is just based off of this partnership you know that the school feeding program is is hard with Nimsi. Where have you seen within this program that you know this trusted identity system that has been put in place has then led to improved access and accountability for the program.

Thank you very much. Your excellencies, you know, everybody here present. So we have this under homegrown school feeding program, one child, one meal, one identity at a time. Imagine here in the United States, you have your social security number. With that, you can be identified. So what we have done with NIMC when we partnered is to make sure that each child in public primary school have been captured with their national identity, which is from early years, we are working towards primary one to six. One, two, what that does is that that means that child is visible, just like you have rightly narrated, that means that child will be captured to be fed, but we are not going to wait for that child to be captured before we fed that child. We were just going through that process where we make sure every child in public primary school are captured under NIMC. But not just the children, also their parents. We are making sure that the parents are also captured. We are making sure that all our smallholder farmers are also captured. They'll be participating in this school feeding program. We're also making sure that all our cooks, all our women, everyone in that value chain are captured. Now, so what does that tell us? I mean, like, you know, tells us. If you want to talk about accountability, it's not about the child. It's about the service delivery around that child. So, what we have seen, what we have started working on is doing that to make sure that everybody that will be participating in the National Home Growth School Feeding Program are captured under NMC. That is the first requirement. If you're a supplier, if you're a small farmer, if you're a cook, if you're a, you must be captured, then the children. So, what that tells us that the people that are going to be delivering the services to the children, we are monitoring them to make sure the end result is that every child in Nigeria that are under the National Homegrown School Feeding Program are fed. Because in the prior years, And I have to say this, we have some children, some families from some political zones complaining that some of their children are not being fed. So with this national identity in partnership with Homegrown, there is no way a child will be left behind. So the accountability, the transparency is there with the value chain. Thank you.

I think that, you know, whilst you are speaking about And the thinking around, you know, having an ecosystem approach is not something that we see often in government. So I would say kudos to you and the NIMC team on that as well. So my next question goes to the DG of Nitas. It's great to have you here, sir. And so my question to you is, So just for the benefit of the audience as well, is that NIDA does have within its mandate, right, and also just within the institution itself, an office for digital innovation that is focused largely on supporting like incubation, cohorts, and founders basically, with mentorship to launch like new ventures. And so my question to you is as regards this particular office of digital innovation. We're just curious to know how digital identity has supported or how it is helping this innovator of this founders, right, to build services that can reach more Nigerians.

Thank you, Your Excellency, the Deputy Chief of Staff to the President, Please permit me to recognize my sister and stand on the existing protocol, because if I say I need to recognize everyone, the list is too long. Thank you for the question, and my apologies for joining late. For many years, we have viewed identity as a means of answering a simple question. Who are you? But today, in the digital economy, identity answers far more important questions. Can we trust the digital interaction? Because in a digital, we interact with people we don't see. So trust is the only thing that will make that thing to happen. And identity is foundation for trust. And trust is the foundation of digital economy. When you are building any platform, any service, you need to trust the users to transact with them. And we've seen that happening in silos before, like the financial sector had to do BVN then because name was not available for everyone. You cannot be within the financial ecosystem without a means to identify you. So that's why they built. And before then also, many startups built a form of identity, how to identify the users, KYC, and so on. So but now, with NIN being democratized, almost every adult in Nigeria today has a NIN. As a startup, if you are building, you don't have to bother yourself about building that identity well. you can use name as the foundation data for whatever you want to do. And when you look at what startups basically build, they build services for you to consume as services you need to make payment. For you to make payment, I need to trust you because it's either you give me the money, I receive it before I deliver the service, or we have like an escrow account That will guarantee I will receive payment after that service. So identity will give that opportunity for them. And it will make it easier for them to build without necessarily been thinking on how to identify the users, how to do KYC and many more. So I believe many startups today, they find it easy to build services as well as consumers, because one of the big challenge also we are having with our e-commerce in Nigeria is sometimes you buy things online, it might not get delivered, or you get something different from what you saw online. So that mean beyond even trusting the individual, the platforms also, we need to build that trust services. So I think this is part of what NIMC is also trying to achieve, having trust as a service. That mean when you see any platform, you can trust it, the website, social media platform and so on. So that can also link the owner or the founder with the entity itself. You don't even need to do an extra KYC to know who you are dealing with. So I believe looking at it as a foundational infrastructure or data that can enable digital transaction, it will really help startups to build and scale up. Thank you.

Thank you very much, sir. I mean, one key thing that you said that I'm taking away from here is that trust is actually the backbone of identity. And without trust, people are not going to be willing to release their data to be used. So thank you very much for that, sir. My next question, and I'm also trying to be conscious of time, will be to Mr. Bola. So first, I wanted to say congratulations on Flutterwave's acquisition of Mono earlier this year. I find that very commendable. And so my question to you is, how does reliable identity verification affect access to digital payments and financial services? And let me provide a bit of context on, you know, the Mono acquisition. Just again, I do not want to assume that people know why that is. So Flutterwave did acquire Mono earlier this year. And the concept really was just to ensure, enable that Flutterwave itself brings in like identity verification and like open banking capabilities within the organization as opposed to relying on like third party services, right? And, and that's the additional context just for everyone, but over to you, Mr. Bola.

So much everyone. Um, great to be here. To your question about identity and mono acquisition itself. So, we today, we start from payments 10 years ago as a company. And the goal then was to defragment Africa's payment infrastructure. And make it easy for someone to make payments and pay without with ease. If you look back like 12, 13 years ago in Nigeria, if you go to a merchant to make payment, they will give you one POS for MasterCard, one for Visa, one for Verve card, if you remember back then. 90s, one device. Those are what we pioneered in the industry. Some of them was also things like bank transfer, when you can pay with NIPs right now. We also pioneered that in the industry as well in Nigeria. But beyond that, one thing that we saw very quickly was that as we're building and scaling, the bedrock of our infrastructure is still trust, right? Payment isn't money, it's trust. People trust that when they see a Flutterwave checkout page, the merchant will get paid and they can pay successfully and they can move on. I want you to know that money doesn't move, instruction moves. You are able to think about how do you identify the person that is paying also getting paid. That's the key about what we saw. And that's what drove us towards how do we ensure that we hone the entire stack for payment, identity, verification, open banking, and give customers, both consumers and enterprises, the full infrastructure to be able to actually have a seamless payment and now banking experience. And that's the crux of that. So the work that's been done by NIMC, for example, as very key to what we do at FloraWave. I give very interesting data points. A couple of years ago in Nigeria, if we're onboarding a business, it's very cumbersome, it is long, it's expensive, because we pay for the identity systems to onboard any customer. With the NIN infrastructure right now and what has been done with the NIMC system, it's now so simple and seamless. You've got a very robust government-driven infrastructure is comparable to what you have in the US with your security numbers. So it's all key. And that helps you to also be able to give customers a very simplified onboarding and be able to give them access to services based on what they should have access to per time. And that's the very crux of what we're trying to build for. So for us, beyond NameSee, building what they've built at infrastructure stage, having an open banking layer that allows us to have data of every Nigerian who is making payments online in Nigeria through Mono acquisition, gives us that credence to making trust a very important fabric of our entire business model. So for us at Flutterwave, this is a very important point for how we see Nigeria leapfrogging payments and banking across the continent.

Very much. Um, Mr. Guala, again, there is this resounding, um, thoughts that I've heard across, you know, everyone who's spoken today. The idea that, you know, trust is the backbone of payments, trust is the backbone of, you know, identity. Like, without trust, people do not release any form of data, you know, um, to any platform or to any organization, um, whatsoever. Um, and so, I have final question to each of the speakers today and my question is basically around so earlier during the presentation there was this conversation around the fact that you know NIMC had reached more than 140 million Nigerians with NIN and so whilst that is quite commendable it it's also assuming that there's still a group of people who are left behind, right, who we still need to reach. And so my question, and I think I'll start with you, Senator, is within the public service, what do you see as, you know, the future, or what would you see, or I'll put it this way, like what do you see as the gaps that exist now that needs to be covered in order for us to have like a full um Circle moment or a full um how do I put it more more like a full adoption within the public service from an identity perspective?

Yeah I I I I think if you uh look at the n presentation.

Borrow a word from Kashifu, they've essentially democratized ah, registration.

Ah, when I was in.

The Senate, I set up eight ICT centers, ah, in each of my local government, and I was a regular visitor to Nimsi, to enable me get, ah, essentially a permit to do names registration, and it was very, very difficult. And what they have done now is essentially, opened up 8,000 plus registration centers at almost every ward. And I think if those kind of innovation, in fact, DG was telling me earlier on that they're actually trying to have a situation where you could start your registration on WhatsApp and essentially go to a center to take your biometrics. So that kind of inclusion is essentially what has allowed them to get to where they are. And I'm very, very confident that maybe in the next couple of months, they will have essentially covered almost every adult, at least in Nigeria. So it's the technology, it's what they have done with the infrastructure. And they've created a system that is so robust and flexible that it enables other stakeholders to plug in and provide additional service that maybe they might not even envisage. So I think the fact that they now have the legal backing to do what they're doing, and they have the innovation and you know applying the technology to essentially make news you don't have an excuse if it's at every word I mean when I was I mean six years ago some people had to go to a state capital to do their registrations. Uh yes, there was some local government NMC center but a lot of the time, you had issues there and I mean, situation where if you wanted to change your date of birth, it was an ordeal. I remember vividly in I think three years ago when she just took over and we had to essentially reach out to her to help us with a couple of people that had a problem with getting their passports because it was almost impossible. you had to literally come to the headquarters to have slight changes. All that is now being done online like, you know, Abikerebi mentioned. So I think they have done come a long way and, you know, as far as I'm concerned with what they have in place, the sky is the limit.

I think NIMC needs a better round of applause for what has been done thus far. Wonderful. Thank you very much, Senator. Now, over to you, Princess Adebo Alima. Um, just in light of the question that I did ask Senator will be, what are the the current barriers that exist within the school feeding program when it comes to being able to access, you know, the more vulnerable, how do you see those barriers? Um, what are the potentials to address those barriers? Um, currently.

Thank you very much. First of all, I'll give you some figures. So in ECOWAS, ECOWAS is feeding about 22.4 million children per day on home grown school feeding. Up to the year 2023, Nigeria was feeding about 10 million, and that is primary one to three. We are looking to add early years, like I said, from primary one to six and out of school children. So that means we'll be feeding close to about 30 million children per day. Now, with that, we have our smallholder farmers, we are going to be engaging millions of smallholder farmers in Nigeria. We're going to be engaging millions of cooks in Nigeria. So look at all those figures. But for us, we're probably going to be one of the greatest partners that NIMC will love to have because there's going to be enforcement. Without your NIN, you cannot participate. And homegrown then, we're looking about, for lack of better, well, maybe like a trillion per year for school feeding. with partners, with support. So if we have that scale that we are putting out in terms of feeding the children and the ecosystem that will be working with us, so we probably have the greatest number of pupils, excuse me, suppliers, smallholder farmers that will be working with us. So the gap for us will be very, very minimized because we are going to enforce. Without NIN, you cannot participate. So we are working towards that. So now the challenge might not be because there's a gap to be filled. The challenge for people that are working with us is to go to NIMC and make sure you get registered and make sure you get captured because it's going to be one of our requirements. So thank you very much.

Thank you very much, Princess Ma. Over to you, DG Sir. My question to you will be, as these founders that you're working with through the Office of Digital Innovation, as most of them are technology founders, as they continue to use these services, the NIM services that are being provided by NIMC, In what areas do you see potential barriers between where they are and the possibility of adopting the use of these services within building their own businesses?

So when you look at it, these services, we can call it a digital lifestyle services from birth to death. We need services. And there are opportunities for startups to build solutions. And citizens, what they want is seamless and delightful services from government. They don't care about government bureaucracies. If I have a new baby, I want to get the birth certificate, the passport, and so on. Can I do everything from my mobile phone? If I have a new car, can I do all the registration without moving from one government office to another? If I want to buy a house, can I do it seamlessly? Anything, any life event experience, can I do it? So I believe NIMC has the opportunity with the new act to reimagine itself, to provide the foundational data for startups to build solutions across the board. We can build solutions that can help people to do anything they want from the comfort zones using digital services. Today, we consume most of these services built by foreign companies. But we can build better services in country because we understand our challenges better than them. And we can build a tailor made services for our citizens. So I think government is creating that enabling environment in terms of like for example recently the president established office for the health technology. These are kind of policies that can help startups to build health tech solutions. And like fintech also, I normally used to say it didn't happen by accident. It was by design. I think GB can testify to that. CBN had a policy in 2012, 2013. That banks must digitalize. They call it IT standard. Tech refresh. Banks must build systems. And the the startups saw a gaps while banks were trying to build those systems. They jumped and started building vintage solutions. So we can open some opportunities in other sectors. agric, education, and so on. And the government has been deliberate on that coming up with policies and NIMC can provide that foundational infrastructure. As startups, you don't need to spend money building identity services because any service you are going to provide, you need identity. You need to know your customers. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Ditsi. And final question to you, Mr. Awola, talking from a private sector perspective is, what would you say would help other private sector businesses, businesses in FinTech and or providing other technology services to actually use identity services securely? And this emphasis on this, whilst keeping onboarding simple. I've been privileged to use some of the platforms where the onboarding process can pretty take a very long time to sort of get on just because of course we understand that they are trying to get the right set of data and they want that data to be like verifiable data. So what would your thoughts be on that?

So I think that it's actually a sum total of the work that's been done by so many government agencies in the last couple of years. Now take us back a little bit. A couple of years ago, Nigeria was on a grey list, all right? And what does that mean for Nigeria? It means that Nigerians in the world will look at in a very suspicious manner when it comes to banking, money laundering, and payments. Now, the things that were done by NIMC, CBN, NFIU, NETDA, all the agents of government here, we got off that list successfully. So now there's a lot more trust for Nigeria in the global ecosystem. right? We in the FinTech and banking space, we see the natural impact of that to our business, right? However, we must not go back there again as a country because the impact is crazy, right? So I think that we all need to understand the fact that KYC is a very important piece of the entire ecosystem. We have to know who we're serving, we have to know them very, very well. And now that we have the NIN infrastructure, the world that I see would be how you have in the UAE and here where you have the UAE pass, where you have a national ID system that can be used for every form of IDV for Nigerians. Even to promote by it can be exported, right? I don't see a reason why if I'm opening a US account in the US, because I'm Nigerian, they should trust my name infrastructure, right? And that's how we want to export the work NIMC has done to the entire world. Look, Nigerians know how to identify Nigerians, and we can do it properly. We've recorded every Nigerian, if possible. That's where I think if those things can be done, naturally KYC will become easier for everybody. But your point is where we're coming from was a very, very dark place. We're now in a better place, and I think it's our responsibility for us operators to make sure that we don't ever get back there again. So when you see those complex KYC, it's from a place of trying to overcompensate for we being Nigerians, right? But now that we are in a place whereby we're no more on the grey list, it's a great for us to now use the NIN infrastructure, the NIMC work over the last couple of years to export that to the entire world. Like if you are doing, we're working with a Nigerian, just take the NIN and the bank will give you all the information, where they live, where they're from, you know, their postcode, their address, where they bank, plug into the BVN infrastructure. That will be the future I would like to see, you know, and once that is there, naturally, we say you're a Nigerian, people are like, yeah, we can verify who you are, we can know you anywhere in the world. It helps a lot across the entire infrastructure. Thank you.

That was very great final words from you, Mr. Bola. We want to export the work that NIMC is doing to the entire world. And I guess that's the essence of this panel at the end of the day. Thank you very much to all our amazing panelists for this wonderful discussion today. And I hope that we continue in light of this and interact with each other more often after this engagement today. Thank you very much.

Well done to you, Duara, for steering that so expertly. Very engaging and so many incredible takeaways. I think for me, one of the highlights was sort of being able to walk through the very short yet impactful turnaround that we've experienced. And I've felt it personally. So I often say that my work as a broadcaster is my side hustle. My primary, my first job is that of a mother. And I'm currently busy raising a future chief of Nigeria and the future governor of Cross River State. But between the two of them, the five-year-old, when she was born, getting her set up and registered and getting her a passport was quite an arduous task. But by the time I had my three-year-old, that's the governor, incoming, it was a lot more seamless. So it's something that's tangible, we feel it, and it's something that doesn't have anything to do with where you belong in the social structure. It's not about elitism, it's not about you know, being working class, we all stand to benefit and the fruits of it are just so wide-ranging. So thank you again for highlighting some of those wins that we all stand to gain. So we're going to go straight into our next panel. And now this one is a little bit more about our sentiment, especially with where the world is going. Over the past couple of weeks, the news has been dominated by conversations from some of the pioneers in AI, telling us about how dangerous it's becoming and we need to find safeguards and all of that. And it's making us all become a lot more skeptical about what happens with our data and what happens with the information that's out there about us. So the next panel is about trust, sovereignty, and interoperability in the digital public economy. So that's the second panel that we will be having. Before we get to that, I think it's also important for us to get deeper into the blueprint of some of the discussions we've been having today. So it is my absolute pleasure to introduce The woman who has spearheaded it all. She's the woman who is leading with such capacity. And you can see the results. They speak for themselves. So before we go to our second panel, it's my absolute pleasure to introduce Engineer Abisoye Kokodu-Sarte, the Director General, CEO of the National Identity Management Commission, who will speak to us about the digital public ecosystem, Nigeria's trust architecture under the NIMC Act 2026.

Thank you, Vibha, for that quick introduction. To His Excellency, the Vice President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, GCON, His Excellency Kashim Shatima, ably represented by another excellency, Senator Hadija. Thank you very much for taking out the time to be here. I mean, he got here very early and was looking for the conference room. So I want to say thank you so much for being here. And to my colleagues that are seated right here on the table, Kashifu, Nita, Madam Abike Dabiri Arewa, she's a legend in this work. I mean, her experience and her guidance has been very helpful. So thank you so much, Madam. And also to Khalil, my aburu, who my colleague. Thank you. Brilliant guy, bright minded individual. And to another colleague of mine, thank you. And to NHI, thank you very much. So let me deep dive into the conversation of the day. Digital public ecosystem, Nigeria trust architecture under the NIMC Act 2026. So a little bit of a background, Uche has spoken to quite a lot of things. So NIMC Act 2007 was not updated until June 2026, June 26, 2026 by the president. 19 years gap, okay? So that says a lot. There's so much that needed to be done because for example, Data Protection Act 2023 was not included in the 2007 Act for very obvious reasons. And you also have the Cybersecurity Bill of 2015. So there are a lot of gaps that needed to be addressed and we needed to bridge that gap. And that's why we have the we had the repeal and reenactment of the NIMC Act so that it could then capture what is happening in line with the best global practices and standards. Now, let me speak about NIMC from a citizen-centric perspective. Everything we do is centered around the citizen, okay? And which is very important to us. The systems that we build and also to ensure that we bridge that gap between the citizens and the government. As you all know, in every country, citizens don't trust the government. That is something that recurring pattern that you see across the globe. Okay. And how do you sort of bridge this, you know, divide that we have this trust divide. And one of the key things that we had to do was obviously where at NIMC, I always joke about this, that we are the only government agency that uses the services that we offer to people. So which means that, you know, we all use us of the NIN. So we obviously have to think from a citizen perspective and citizen approach to say, how do we address these issues that citizens face? So I'll give you a little bit of an example. For JAM, for example, you find out that citizens, you know, just something as simple as going and done by the way is the entrance exams to go into the higher education universities and the rest. Um it can be extremely cumbersome for something that should be so simple. Um citizens have been frustrated in terms of accessing government services for a very long time. There's been a huge disconnect. And so we looked at it and said, I started with the new DG for JAMB and said, okay, how can we address these issues end to end? And we looked at the need of application and we said, okay, you know what we're going to do? We're going to ensure that they're able to verify their identities because you find out on the day of the exams, there's a long queue. So by the time it's time for you to sit the exams, you're already overwhelmed. you know, and you're sort of disorientated. So how do we address this issues that make it very seamless for these kids that have this exam to sit. And so we spoke about obviously adding, you know, the JAM services onto the Nino's, um, application. So Nino technically is your digital, um, credential wallet, um, app that we have, which is been built to be able to ensure that at some point in time, it's your single sign on to access any private sector service or government, service within the country. And also, it's supposed to also be the other platform that allows for cross-border interoperability across, you know, to whichever country you need to do that with. So, we looked at that and we said, how can we address these issues? And so we've come up with something, which we will launch at some point this year. But the same approach also in terms of citizens being frustrated when it comes to one. passport issuance and also renewal of your existing passport. Those are two different use cases. Today you can do that using your verifiable digital identity credential. We have NASCO in the room. I see Fumi Wu is the program coordinator for NASCO. NASCO is the office that coordinates the cash transfers. That's the social safety net for Nigeria. And one of the difficulties they've had over the years is being able to eliminate ghost beneficiaries and for us to be able to validate and authenticate the identities of the individuals that we consider beneficiaries of this government cash transfer programs. And that's one of the key things we've been able to work on together. And it also included us giving them a front-end partner license. Well, the front-end partner, again, is an initiative under the World Bank called the ID4D program where we, you know, partner with the private sector to be able to drive enrollment, especially in nooks and crannies of Nigeria, hard to reach areas. And so one of the key things that we did with Nasco was to also train them to be a front-end partner so that it's also easier for them to be able to capture because they also have people at the local government level. We call them the SOCOs and it's a coordinating unit. So we definitely work with them hand in hand to be able to assist, to be able to do this. We've got school feeding, which is another use case and we've got Princess, she's got two PhDs and she's putting it to very good use, being in charge of school feeding. So, Princess, I want to say well done. But another critical area is looking at it from a government perspective, okay? Sorry, I'm trying to rush through because he has to leave. I have so much in my head, I need to unpack, but I'm going to speak to a few things, okay? So, looking at it from a government perspective, How do you enable access to citizens through all the programs that they have? How do we ensure that there are no duplications in terms of beneficiaries? And how can we ensure transparency and accountability to our citizens in that process? Another key thing also from the government end is You have MDAs that have very little or no technology. So how can we, you know, obviously create an interoperability environment for them, like a test environment, for example, a digital public infrastructure sandbox for them to be able to, with little or no cost, get on board with what we're working on. So these are the other areas that we've looked at. We're working with NITA in terms of ensuring that all the different MDAs are able to scale up their infrastructure. to be able to meet you know the demands of today's global needs. Um when you're also looking at driving digital trade. Digital identity is the backbone for that. And we're looking at you know we've been having conversations around or look at the trade happening on the Lobito corridor channel and the rest. But one thing people fail to understand that for you for that to happen. You need to be able to enable cross-border interoperability. And digital identity again comes into the conversation. It is the backbone for that for that that for that to happen across board. So from a NIMC perspective, we've done quite a lot of work. We've done a lot of technological upgrade and the back end. We have also decided that when we are looking at the private sector, yes, we do regulate the private sector, but at the same time, we want to make sure that we continue to strengthen that partnership that we have because it is their job to go out and implement. We want to make sure that we make their lives a lot easier. We want to be able to ensure that We advance the cause of their mandate through verifiable identity credentials. So in terms of tackling fraud, one of the key measures that we have taken is to ensure that we move from field validation to biometric validation, okay? To make sure that we're able to do that. And one of the use cases we have is with the SIM integration. So my predecessor made sure that we were able to link the name to the SIM. Uh, but one of the key areas for us to be able to, you know, improve the issues around security issues around that, was for us to be able to say, okay, when you come to get your SIM card, we need to verify that it's you. So what they do in diocese is obviously take your picture, it matches against what's in the database, and in real time we're able to verify you. And we have to obviously reduce the time lag for that. It used to be about 15 seconds, and now it's in milliseconds. And so there's so much work that has gone into trying to address all of these issues. There's national addressing, again, that's going to be on the NINOS. where you're able to see the beautiful marriage between NIMC, that does identity verification, and also NIPoS, which handles the logistics postcode, and also the local government, Algond, that owns the street naming and the house numbering. So there's a marriage between the three of us on that, under the leadership of the office of the vice president, which is chaired by the VP, and it's through his is wonderful deputy chief of staff. We're so blessed to have the deputy chief of staff as the deputy chief of staff in Nigeria. Um very very happy because he's always on top of his his game. And he's always miles ahead and he's you know he listens to everyone and contributes. So thank you so much for that. Um we'll I'll use this to welcome the honorable minister for education was just coming. Doctor Tujia Lausa. Thank you for joining us. Thank you, sir. And so going back into our discussions, how can we ensure that with the private sector, how do we ensure that we're able to scale up and make sure that every single SME in Nigeria is able to use verification to expand their services, access to their services? And what we want to do with Nigeria is to make sure that across board, As an individual, you're able to authenticate yourself in real time. For example, if the police should stop you, you should be able to show your ID card, your virtual ID card, which is on your NIN application, and verify and identify who you are. Because you have young people in Nigeria that also have those challenges. They stop you, they can't verify your identity for a long time. I'll give you another instance, correctional services, every inmate in Nigeria has been issued a verifiable identity credential now, which is the NIN. So we are going across board. We have a partnership with the Ministry of Agriculture for 2 million farmers. We also have a lot happening in terms of security agencies are all, you know, are all linked and able to verify now. So, including the office of the National Security Adviser, DSS, EFCC, we have ICPC, NAFDAC, now we've just onboarded customs. So, we have quite a lot of agencies participating in this. We also have Interpol in the back end. Just to show you that it's important and for me, I will speak to what Kashiful said on digital trust. Um, we, I'm sure you've heard of public infrastructure, Nigeria is the root certificate authority by law, um, for public infrastructure and that, for that to actually happen, DPI is the backboard for that. But the overall foundational backboard is digital identity. So DPI cannot function if you don't have identity, public infrastructure cannot function if you don't have identity. And an instance of public infrastructure is e-invoicing, for example. So one uploads an invoice, and how do you know that that invoice you know, is verifiable. How do you know that that invoice has been uploaded from that person, came from that person, because you can always deny tomorrow. So, what are we trying to do to ensure that you have a digital certificate that ties the authentication of that device and that individual, you know, to one another so that you it's time stamped and you know that this happens. So, it's basically it's similar to you having a legal agreement, physical legal agreement document and you sign both parties sign and you know that you know this is a trusted document. So, it's it's created the equivalent online and different instances of this. You have got e-procurement, you know, you've got also e-justice system where you've got the e-affidavit, court filing, et cetera. There are a lot of these cumbersome processes that need to be able to be digitized. So you spoke about, Dibuwa, you spoke about the shares. Okay, so we're, you know, working with SEC now to be able to ensure that we we address issues around making sure that the single sign on is the for you to be able to buy your shares. So you should be able to either go into your app and do what you need to do or you go onto the the site, the website and you sign on using your to verify your identity so that you're able to improve the services around that. So there's so much in terms of building a digital public ecosystem in Nigeria. And it brings us back to the same conversation over and over again. Trust is really the currency for us to like this. We are definitely on board at NIMC. We've made all the necessary steps. We are conscious of what the citizens want. And we also the citizens too. And we also bear in mind you know the timeline that the Renewed Hope Administration government has and what they want to achieve because this administration is using the name as as a catalyst you know for access to government and to ensure effective service delivery and effective governance across board. So there's so much that we have done. Um we've we are in partnerships with CAC especially with business registrations again which is very important. Ensuring that the name is you know is verifiable in terms of the directors at least two directors in you know for CAC company documentations. Um for travel now using the name so you know that immigration also has the e-gates and that rests on the backbone of identity um so there there's so much there's a lot to unpack like I said earlier there's also consumer credit and um we're working with credit core to continue to ensure that those that access their consumer credit can actually see it on your NIN and tax has integrated and harmonized with NIMC so NIN and tax ID are literally the same if you open up your NIN you can see it there. And NHIA is a recent partnership that we've done because he's been trying to resolve the issues around ensuring that every single citizen has access to health. And what he has done is, first of all, get the approval, presidential approval, to expand his mandate from just not attending to government employees on the federal, on the national, and the subnational level, but also ensuring that it's expanded to every single Nigerian. I think it deserves a round of applause for that because we have now partnered and we have now issued an NHI number. We've linked every single number with every name. So every name holder now has access to health insurance, which is very, very important. And we're talking about a lot of people, hundreds of millions of citizens. So what are we driving at here? We're trying to look at and use the name to make sure that we integrate and every single database that has been in silos across board because there was no set standards initially. Everybody was just building what they wanted to build to, you know, obviously, fit their own area of objective. But now, we're doing that and not just integrating but harmonizing. There's something that we did of research which is how the NHI was born out of it and the tax integration harmonization. We created industry-based tokens. Okay? Okay. So that it's able to tie everything in that industry. And we're able to then say, this is how it's so much easier for us to connect all the dots seamlessly. So for the tacos, we've got the Tao token. For the finance, we've got the fin token. For NHIA, we've got the health insurance token. So we've got like, we've got Edu token. It's good that the minister of education is in the room. He's been very, very supportive in everything that we've been able to achieve. So JAM is under the Ministry of Education. Nel Fund is another use case, which is the first student loan in the country. you know, launched by mister president. So, every single student is a verified beneficiary of that program and we're able to monitor the end-to-end life cycle management of that student and so, one of the reasons that why we partnered with the National Population Commission was mandate is birth and death registration was for us to also be able to make sure that once a baby is born, we're able to issue them a name and that's what we've been able to do successfully. So, from that different, at every stage, all the nine different life cycle stages of the entire life, we are able to then monitor and see from beginning to the end. And with the FinTechs, I mean, they will say excited now because verifying is so seamless. We used to have network what would I call you? I don't know if I should call it Nepal now. But we used to we we used to have the the network was literally down time. It was used to it was very epileptic. Okay? Very embarrassing and I could tell you that this year we haven't had that issue. So it just shows that we've actually gone you know done so much to be able to you know stabilize this. We are the water moment at the ward level now. Because the president mandated us to take it out to the community level. And so we looked at it and we said, if we're able to know every single person of the country, we're then able to obviously close the digital divide and also increase financial inclusion across board because it makes it easier for the fintechs and the banks, even the microfinance houses. Also for us to be able to then say, okay, scale up all the small nano businesses, SMEs across board. So, we're so, SMEDAN is integrated with NIMC. SMEDAN is a small medium enterprise association. So, we have a lot of government agencies already integrated and we have I would say majority of the key players across insurance, finance, telcos, integrated and onboarded onto the NIMC platform. So we've done quite a lot to be able to ensure that we try and close the gap. We've worked on the pre-enrollment via WhatsApp. So I don't think anyone has done it by WhatsApp before, okay? Because we want to be able to make sure we mandate all citizens to enroll through their WhatsApp application. pre-enroll and then go to the, select the centers they want, whether they're in the diaspora or they're in Nigeria, to be able to get their biometrics captured at their convenience and at their, you know, from the comfort of their home. We've automated a lot of our processes. You can modify online. And what triggered that was because of the immigration, because Once you go onto, if you have an existing passport, you need to renew your passport, you go onto the portal, what then happens is you are then redirected back to NIMC to go and modify your records. So NIMC is the single source of truth. And for you to do that, I don't want you to come back to my office. and then I don't want to see an endless queue. So we had to automate that process, ensure that there's a self-service modification portal online. You have to use your biometrics. So what are we doing here? Trying to ensure that we're moving away from enrollment. For those that have been enrolled, you can start using going through the reusable, verifiable, credentials that you already have to use it to access safe services or improve or or do whatever needs to be done. So, we've done that and then we want to ensure that for those that haven't been enrolled, they want to make sure that by the end of this year, 95% of them are enrolled, pre-rolled into the database and then we can then make sure we focus on the biometric capturing for them. So, that it makes it a lot easier. We can close that gap. We have a partnership soon. We want of the smaller wallet finance wallet companies to be able to drive financial inclusion because the traditional banks have this long criteria list to open up an account. So I want to make it seamless and easy for citizens to be able to you know open up their their accounts. So we want to make sure that these wallets are tied to the EID card again. So that you have like a tokenized payment which means that you use that money for what has been given. The purpose of what the money been issued to you for, rather than you using it to go and buy beer down the road or pay for your second wife's hairstyle or whatever it is. But on this note, guys, what we're doing with public infrastructure is to make sure that across all the different use cases at the national or subnational level, we are doing stakeholders engagement and we are driving to make sure that every single business in Nigeria private business, whether you are tiny or you are the biggest, plus government starts using the public infrastructure certificates, the sub CA certificates that will be issued across board to make sure that we improve trust and, you know, obviously reduce identity fraud at a great, great last. So thank you very much for that quick discussion. I had a long speech written, but I decided to skip the speech because I love the session, the first session, and I love the responses from all the participants. So I'm looking forward to the second session. We've got so much to unpack, like I said, but if I sit here talking, we're going to be here for another five hours. So let me allow the next session, panel session to start. Thank you very much.

Don't you love it when expertise is talking off the top of her head, she's able to reel out the DNA, the framework, the structure, the interoperability of NIMC. So, you know, incredible work being done. And of course, quite apt that the honorable minister for Education, Honorable Tunji Alausa, also walked in because a big part of this conversation is education. So I hope that once we conclude with our second panel, we will hear from him as well. Let's hear directly from the minister about the impact to the education ecosystem. But before we go there, Honourable Minister is looking at me, I just put him on the spot. No, sir, don't worry, you can relax. We're going to have a panel and then we, of course, it would be quite a lost moment, lost opportunity if we didn't get to hear your input. But as you settle in, we'll have the panel carry on. So we can hear from you. So many great things happening in the education ministry. But for the second panel now, which as I'd introduced earlier, is focusing on trust, sovereignty, and interoperability in the digital public economy. We've already sort of heard the background, especially around trust and building a system and a backbone and an infrastructure that citizens themselves feel was created for them and that they have faith in. So we're going to break that down now and see what that looks like in detail. Our first speaker on this panel is Khalil Suleiman Halilu, who is the EVC and CEO of the National Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure, NASENI. Olumbe Akinkubem, executive, please, yes, do give him a round of applause. Olumbe Akin Kube, Executive Director, Digital Exploration and Technical Services, Galaxy Backbone Limited, Nigeria. Stella Makan, Practice Manager, DPI, World Bank. Bayo Adekomi, Convina, CEO, Data Science, Nigeria. And of course, expertly moderated by Fola Olatunji David, Technical Advisor on Projects for the National Identity Management Commission, NIMC. So I hand over to the capable hands of Mr. Fola Tunji David.

I'm right here. Thank you. Thank you so much, Mbuyi. I'm back on the mic. I'm sure those of us that were here at the beginning could tell the difference between the people who have been paid and who are talented at moderating and those of us that feel in. But once again, delighted to be here this very important conversation and thank you to some of our guests who have other engagements. We wouldn't take too much of your time. For the next panel, we'll try to keep it short and sweet. Unfortunately, one of our panelists couldn't make it, so I'm in between two of our panelists and we have Mr. Kalil there. I'd like to think of the last panel as having spoken about the past. the current and the future in terms of how identity systems worked before. For this panel, I'd like us to think about it as the possible. So we framed the conversation as to what does this look like as NIMC anchors Nigeria's digital public economy, and how do we get ready for this and to make sure that we participate fully in this digital economy. So I'm going to start from, I think I can start from my right, ladies first, as we often say. So Stella is the practice manager for digital public infrastructure at the World Bank. The World Bank, as we mentioned earlier, is a great ally partner to NIMC via the ID4D project. But DPI, I think globally, is something that a lot of countries are coming to grasp with, not because they haven't understood it or not because they don't understand it, but because there are certain constraints that need to be met before you can consider it apt. So what I'd like you to do is to walk us through what DPI is and how you think Nigeria can participate in both DPI and the digital public economy. Over to you.

Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you for the opportunity to join you today. And I am by myself today, but I represent many colleagues who are working with you in Nigeria, our regional team. Excellencies, first of all, congratulations for the passing of the National Identity Management Commission Act, which provides the legal and policy framework for you to take your ambitious agenda forward. But also, congratulations for the results you have shared with us today. Many people have worked hard for many years to help get you to these results. In terms of answering your question, many countries, and we have been working with more than 17 countries in the last 10 years on digital public infrastructure. Many countries are making investments not just in their identity ecosystem, which is critical, both to analog economy, but also to the digital economy. Countries are investing in payments infrastructure, and we've learned about the amazing work that is happening across Nigeria, both public and private sector. Data, data is the intellectual property that the country has. And we know that your team and other government agencies have been working closely on digitalizing government data and making sure that the interoperability between the government systems enable better data exchange, data sharing. So this historically have been the main digital building blocks that countries have been investing. And actually yesterday and today at the United Nations General Assembly, there are many events where governments are meeting with the public and private sector to discuss on DPI and what's next. I think Nigeria has a strong foundation to build the next generation of service delivery. And what we have heard today from everyone who has spoke, there is huge demand of how to make this digital public infrastructure deliver for people. And we've heard about the experience that the moderator has shared in terms of how easy it was to get the birth certificate five years ago and three years ago. And governments are putting their DPI infrastructure specifically to work to enable better services for the people. At the World Bank Group, we have launched an ambitious target. We call it At a Billion, a digital and AI target, which aims to help countries both continue investing in their access infrastructure, access to internet connectivity. But also, our plan is by 2030 to work with governments like Nigeria to enable at least 400 million people with access to digitally enabled services. And again, the priority is how do you help deliver services not around government ministries, but around the people's life events. birth certificates, opening a business, getting a diploma, and anything you need from the government in an easy, cheaper, seamless manner. I think you and the Nigeria has a strong foundation on which to take this forward. I hope during the panel, we can talk a little bit about tokenization. about AI, about cross-border, how to continue investing in digital trust services, and many other opportunities that you can unlock. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you very much, Stella. That was very comprehensive overview. And you are right, these are conversations that we have to continue having as to what are the components that build trust. across the digital economy ecosystem. So I'm going to speak to the EVC CEO, Engineer Khalil, Khalilu. You are quite the builder. Your job is building the infrastructure of the future and the possible. So as we look at preparing Nigeria for this digital economy that we are already participating in, what are some of the things that you would say you are tasked with and some of the things that you think we can do better as a country.

Thank you very much for the invite, my dearest sister, and congratulations on so many ends. It's good to be here. Last year, I was stuck at the gate. But this year, there is no way I can miss it. So at NASENI, we look at the digital economy from a very simple perspective. Digital sovereignty cannot exist without technological capability and capacity. Identity may be digital, but the infrastructure that make the identity to be trusted is very physical. And this is where NASENI comes in. Sovereignty means capability and choice. And I would like to think about infrastructure and local capabilities in three layers. One is infrastructure, second is capability, and third is trust. When you're talking about infrastructure, it means things like reliable electricity, connectivity, data center, cloud, and computing capacity. We also need to secure all our devices, have resilient networks, And this is the bedrock if I may say for digital infrastructure. Second, you are talking about local capability. Uh this is where Nigerian engineers come into play. Uh we need to have engineers that understand the the our own local technology stack. Uh also, people who can operate imported systems. We tend to procure systems from various you know, sources and different countries with very complex systems. Uh the third is our own trust architecture. Systems must be inoperable, secured, and designed so that citizens understands that whatever information they dish out, it's secured and they can trust whoever is responsible for handling their information. So, for Naseri, these three things form the key prerequisite for having a trusted national digital infrastructure. Where you can put, you can not only, not only that you can purchase technology, but you can out, you can outsource technological sovereignty, indefinitely. So, we continue to build capacity around the physical bits, around the capabilities for, you know, our engineers. And lastly, the framework that needs to be put in place in order for us to achieve this digital sovereignty. It takes us back to, you know, all the leapfrog that Africa has been doing around, especially service infrastructure, you know, service provision. It has been one of the fastest growing sector of our economies. But without the digital, I mean, without a physical backup, data centers, reliable electricity, also clean electricity, not just reliable, you know, we cannot scale and achieve digital sovereignty. So, this is where an agency like NASENI comes in to ensure that we continue to upgrade and we continue to make our engineers independent and also give them more reason why they should remain locally to reduce capital flight to ensure that we're able to achieve this mission. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Thank you very much, EVC. And that point, that last point about convincing and supporting engineers locally takes me to the next speaker and panelist. Mr. Bayo has been a strong advocate of the ecosystem and data science in Nigeria. This company is aptly named Data Science Nigeria. And part of what as far back as 10, 12 years has been, the message has always been that the future of data science is coming, is coming, and it's now here. When we were talking offline yesterday, I think he admitted that it's even here quicker and scarier than we expected. So as we talk about this new digital world, I want us to talk about trust and safeguards. So what are some of the things that we need to be thinking of as a country, as organizations, and even as individuals? So I'd like you to take it away.

Hello. Okay, thank you very much. I think before we zero in on trust and why trust or the issue of data quality should be a concern is for us to understand the role of NIMC. I always tell people that the role of NIMC is bigger than we think. When we talk about the $1 trillion economy that we want to have by 2030, NIMC is the epicenter of it. Why do I say that? Knowing people empowering people, supporting people to become productive, getting people to actively contribute to economy through commerce, getting people who are out of school to come to school, getting people who are not able to consume health services to have a way to consume it is a pathway to building the economy we want to build. So NIMC becomes the backbone, the foundation of our $1 trillion economy. So if we see it with that bigger understanding, then the whole construct around building the right safe guide, getting the right data becomes very important. And I will give some practical examples that I had many years ago. I used to be the chief innovation officer for MTN. About 8, 10 years ago when we had the challenge on getting a lot of our customers to link their name to their SIM number, we had to go to the field. And as a chief innovation building the platform and the AI system, had to be on the field. And there are a lot of things we saw on the field. Things as simple as Nigeria being smart enough to know that I can take a picture of a person in a picture and present it as a live picture. That is how smart we could be. And the fact that you even get to a point that people who are sincere do not even know the name to use. We have so many compound names that people are confused about what name to use for what. And of course, when you go for an African naming ceremony, you might see about 10 names. So people are not even sure of the names to use. So there's a lot of complexity. And I know that as NIMC goes to the next level-- and kudos to you for 142 million people. Now, as we go into the next level, we're going to be talking to the less educated, less literate people, and it's going to become more complex. So the whole complexity of quality becomes the next challenge that we're going to have, because majority of the next level of people that we're going to be engaging, collecting their data, may not even be sure of their names. show of their identity. And that begins to put a lot of demand on even the quality of learning and capacity at our enrollment center, becoming not just a place to register, but a place to resolve a lot of personal issues that are fitting to their identity. Because the problem with data starts on the point of collection. If we're able to create those safeguards, I remember in those days at MTA, we started creating applications such that at the point of entry, imagine somebody answering Chigozie, Olubayo, Abdulai. It is most unlikely. So we have to build algorithms that could flag those incidences at the point of collection so that even the enrollment staff, the CMA agents we call them, were empowered to be able to at least bring in some level of quality at that level. Why? Because Garbage in, garbage out. So, that ability to optimize that process, understanding that data collection that forms a core of identity is going to be our pathway to building the Nigerian of our dream. Therefore, the entire value chain, the entire ecosystem must have that quality mindset. Not just that we are waiting for the data to come in, but the fact that the entire journey, you know, are properly, intentionally optimized, that is the best that it can be. And because that also comes into safe guide. And that's why we believe that going to the next level in order to become more inclusive as we begin to engage in low income segment because 142 million done, then the next layer of people are going to be engaging. I perceive a lot of diminishing return in terms of quality. And that would mean that over dependence of technology, we also shift to more inclusive technology. How do we use voice, for example, for people who use feature phones, for example, as a basis for consent, for validation? How do we bring in new technology that begin to reflect the reality of the people? Why? Because NIMC is the enabler, the backbone of the Nigerian economic good that we're seeking for, and for that reason, expanded quality that is inclusive, intentionally embracing the reality of everyday people, irrespective of their literacy, the educational level and where they are becomes more important, even as we build better technology to support the delivery of the good work that has already been done. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much, Mr. Bayoh. And you've said it very well. the approach to building technology shouldn't just be one of tool centric, but user centric. And I can attest that in my role as the technical advisor on projects to the DG, every system that is built at NIMC is built from perspective of the citizens. The DG rightfully said it, we are one parastatal, one MDA that uses our product every day. In fact, we use it more than the people outside use it. So we have to look at it like how do we make sure that this product works and it does work. So I'd like to go back to you, Stella. We've spoken about the systems that we're building and one of the tenets of the digital public economy is one of sharing. So whether it's data sharing, whether it's information sharing, whether it's identity sharing in a secure, safe, consent-driven manner, How do we balance out that interoperability with privacy? And I'd like you to say this in about two to three minutes. I don't know if the honorable minister is... I've tried to catch you. Thank you, sir. So, yes. So how do we balance interoperability of the systems that we're building with privacy? And you can also put your ending remarks in that.

Thank you. This is a question that every country is making its own decisions based on, again, the priorities it has to achieve, the challenges it's facing, and the risks it's ready to carry. Yesterday, in another panel, The topic of interoperability, specifically in the context of an AI enabled future, came very much into the discussion. And again, the question of data governance and AI governance and interoperability was very much strengthened as being interlinked and interdependent. That's a question that, again, you have countries that are considered to be good examples, good practices to follow, to learn from. But at the end of the day, it's the government, it's the private sector, it's the people, it's the policy community who have to come together and decide what do we share and what checks and balances, what we keep since our other colleague mentioned about digital sovereignty, how much digital sovereignty we can afford because this is another challenge. So what do you keep in the country? What do you open in order to enable your private sector and your ecosystem to grow and flourish and to achieve the objective that you have mentioned, the $1 trillion economy. We stand ready to continue working with you on addressing this, but also to scale the initiatives that you have been talking about a little bit earlier. You mentioned the PKI infrastructure. In late August, Nigeria hosted the Africa PKI Consortium here in your country. We had the privilege to participate, and we see this as a great opportunity to build on and to expand across the continent. The cross-border trade and cross-border data sharing and flows, again, this is another opportunity where countries in Africa can come together and address these challenges. So very much looking forward to working together. His Excellency mentioned earlier that sky is the limit. For Nigeria, yes, sky's the limit. I had the opportunity to visit Nigeria back in February 2023, and not just Abuja and Lagos, but also to go to Anambra State and visit the Onitsha city. So it's like the opportunities that you have in your country are enormous, and it's great to see the determination and the leadership to take advantage of these opportunities. Thank you.

You very much for those remarks and and I hope you do come back to Nigeria and visit my village. So much innovation going on in Ogun state also. Uh finally, I would like to ask and this is across Mister Khalil and Mister Bayo. As we think about building, how do we make sure we do not build in isolation? How do we make sure that because we're talking about this digital public economy. And I keep saying that NIMC is at the heart of it, between the root CA of PKI, the digital public infrastructure that we power, and the identity which we make our mandate every day. How do we make sure that we build systems and how does NACENI and, to your point, data science, how does that support building systems that work together?

All right, thank you, Fola. I think Nigeria's biggest or greatest advantage may actually be the scale of our innovation, the entire innovation ecosystem. So we should therefore design digital public infrastructure for other creators and innovators to build on top of it. Government is doing a lot of the handholding, But eventually, what the outlook should look like is government builds the trust rails, the identities, the standards, the security, and the appropriate safeguards, and then hand it over to innovators to build on top of them. Without a doubt, Nigerians are one of the most creative people on earth. And if there is anything that nobody argues or nobody contests with Nigerians is our creativity. so building that and having an open playground, you know, for innovators to write on top, you know, should be what government is concentrating on. Another thing that we need to be mindful as government is the fact that a lot of excellent players are watching our our creative engineers, you know, we are becoming a building ground I mean, a training ground, you know, for others to to harvest. So we need to think of frameworks and infrastructure to be able to retain some of these things locally or if at all, they have to go abroad to contribute. We need to find something that will retain locally to impact our own economy. You've seen countries like Philippine that have mastered the art of exporting the house helps or you know, if you, if you may call it. And to, and to my surprise, their, their identity, which is their passport, is just for the duration of, you know, that period of work. So, other countries are not worried about them coming to stay and not coming back coming back home. But there is a big economy for creatives, for innovators, that they could leverage back home. You can see what what's happening with the dirty December. I remember one of my friends from the US missed the last one and we were checking for the next one to book tickets, but it's already fully booked a year later. So we need to see how we can truly leverage these kind of opportunities. Thank you.

I think the whole conversation, there's this overflow African proverb that, "If you want to go fast, you go alone, but if you want to go far, you go together." I think one thing that we have seen today We've seen private sector, Flutterwave has been here, the honorable minister is here, we've seen social register, we've seen feeding program. We can already see that NIMC is at the, there's an ecosystem mindset. And we're also very privileged through Gates Foundation and EY to also be working with NIMSI around creating a sandbox for people to test and try the platform. So there's already a mindset and this must be a universal truth. And that's why I'm quite excited about the project that you are leading around the fact that the same excellence that we are seeing in NIMC, how do we also take that to all the MDAs so that everyone can start consuming the service? Because we built identity for 142 million people to make them economically traceable. So we now need to start building consumption capability. in order to build consumption capability, then we need an ecosystem. I want to get to a point where, you know, an agent in Lagos wants to get a new tenant for someone and they can just say, give me your identity, shareable code, that level, because those are the things that power economy, that that decision can be made very quickly and speedily, you know, and that for me is the way the whole ecosystem comes in. And I'm glad through the benefit of the work we're doing with Fourland and Digi, that there's already those thoughts already emerging. And I tell you, those ability to translate those expertise across various ecosystem players, what will drive us towards that $1 trillion economy that we're looking for. But it also comes with a demand and a challenge as well. When you become to carry the whole ecosystem, you also must be ready to carry some blame game. It is like what happened in financial sector, where you go to a place and you use your POS to do transaction. And you know normally, those service provider will always say that it does not work, it's not because of us, it's because of the service provider. Even though NIMSO will do a good job of validating identity, but the capacity of the last mile, the delivery system becomes a consideration. And that is why there's anything that will drop on the table, the excellence with which we have driven NIMC must be extended to all the value delivery layers including the enrollment centers who I will call empowerment centers so that the value of the excellent work that has been done can be delivered in the last mile and our vision of leveraging identity to power the Nigerian economy can be achieved very easily and seamlessly. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much. Um it's clear we have to recruit Mister Bayo. But this has been a fantastic panel. I've certainly enjoyed some of the learnings and discussions that we've had. Thank you very much for listening, and I'll pass the mic back to Ms. Mvimbai. Thank you.

All right, Fola, I'm not sure what you're talking about when you say people who get paid to do this. I'm here on national duty. Service to nation. Yes, yeah, no, I'm just messing with you, but I think you did a fantastic job. And just similar to the first panel, there's so many valuable insights that we're able to extract when we're all able to come under one roof. Thank goodness the roof happens to be in New York, but these conversations will carry forward wherever we go from here, beyond Nigeria, around the world, it's clear that the message is now set in stone, it's solidified that the Nigerian identity infrastructure is ready for interoperability, not just with different parts of the ecosystem within Nigeria. So it's not just education, it's not just health, it's not just security, but we're now ready to interact with the rest of the world and see how some of those synergies can be made because that's where the world has moved to now. We used to say that's where the world is going, but that's where the world has gone. And we're playing a catch up game, but thank goodness we've got some fantastic leaders at the helm of NIMC who are making sure that we're catching up very quickly. So thank you so much for that and for the conversations today. As we round up, Honorable Minister, I think you will be the icing on the cake today because so much of the benefit has been sort of afforded to the education sector. We're feeling it. The numbers are hugely impressive. We spoke about JAMB, we've spoken about Nel Fund, but we'd love your insights, your remarks about your experience, especially sort of with how NIMC is being revolutionized and the direct impact it's making on education in Nigeria. The Honorable Minister for Education for the Federal Republic of Nigeria, His Excellency Tunji Alausa.

Thank you. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to have probably last word. And I welcome everybody to New York. Let's, we have to look at the quantum, the magnitude of work NIMC is doing and has done just in the last three years. And I really, really like to commend the DGC of NIMC and our team. And the reason why this is very surreal to me, and because when she took over the job, I met her at the earlier stage, probably the first few months. She was one of the first few appointments that was announced by our president then. And then she sat down, she was struggling that the database had a cap of about 90 million biometrics that she could do. And then he had to go talk to people at the World Bank to see how they can expand. And now 90 million three years ago to 142 million today, 50 million more people that biometrically identified. And if you looked at how long it took us to get to that 90 million and the scale that we've done in just three years. This is impressive. And the reason why I met with that was not because she was she's my sister. Because I I needed her. Now listen. If we have to build a robust educational system. We need a biometric proven identity in several areas of education. From and in some and several of the problems we're confronting that confronted us then. I'm glad that We've really moved quickly to tackle several of those problems. We're talking about out-of-school children, significant pervasive exam of practices in our country, fake certificates. So you can't solve any of those problems if you cannot identify, and not just identify people, but with their biometrics. And today, I'm happy to report that through the help of NIMC, we've built solutions to all these problems that we thought were big problems then. And what did we do? And we also were cognizant of the fact that if you look at the population, 220 million people today from our own manual data and population estimates and other estimates, children of school going age from early child care, early child care development to primary to junior secondary school to senior secondary school and education account for about 70 million of our population. So then, if we have almost a third of the population of the country, we have to we also have to be very particular and look at identity as part of what we do as we continue to transform our education system. And today, We've leveraged on LIMSI to help us deliver on several of the things we're doing. Today, Nigeria, from having no education data, digital education data, in just three years ago, we now have the largest education database in Africa today. We're set to have to capture about 70 million, but as I'm talking now, we have up to almost 45 million. in that I have digitized Nigeria education management information system, all with their proven identity. We've also embarked on what we could never have done before, a learner identification and and and aligner education number to help track every child from when they go into school from primary one to the education journey. We link that to the NIN. We couldn't have done that before because we had the airline number that had no biometrics behind it. It was a worthless number. But then this airline number has helped us and we continue to help us reduce manage and intervene in the unenviable position that we have today, having the number one or number two highest number of out of school children in the world. Because beyond now, knowing where those, how those children are progressing along the educational journey, we could see when they drop off. And we're now going to use that to build up social protection pathway to support that. beyond the what we're doing with the airline number and a dynamic, the digital, the digitalized Nigeria information system. Look at the other things we're intervening with. We're talking about admission into our university, into our tertiary institutions. You need where people now will go and go and take example for for others. Now, you could, now, part of your The process is then we have to identify you biometrically. You have to bring your in. And now JAMB is now able to now improve their customer service because of the trust they have in identity management system. That's how you begin to change the scope of the country. And I had one of my friend told me about 25 years ago that Nigeria will not develop. And I said, why? He said, you do not have an identity system. Not until Nigeria has an identity system, that's when development starts. He said-- and luckily, he told me that in America probably about 30 years ago. And that really, really destroyed my bubble then. And he said, look at America. Everything is centered around their social security number, every single thing, but today, we're developing. We have it now. Thank you, Nimse, and thank you for all you've done. You can't, you heard the last speaker, I said, Nimse is the epicenter, identify it, it's not the epicenter, it's everything. No, it's everything. need everything. Honestly, if we have to build an egalitarian society, that's what you need. That's the only thing you need. And the way they've taken it now is just so it's so impressive. I can't even imagine when you not get to your tokenization and things like that. When you not begin to really silo things out. I won't come and talk about all the other security things she's done. But when I got when she updated me on what she was doing with the tax people, I was I was I was going to collapse. because of the the usefulness of the way they've deployed that, the way they've now expanded the tax pool in any country you have taxed it, but it's okay, but then you now know the kind of people that are eligible to, to pay taxes. The quantum from using NIMC to the number of people, the target population that should be paying taxes is like it went 100 fold. Look at what that would do to public infrastructure in our country. Look at what that would do to education. look at what that would do in terms of, you now begin to get more money, for more tax money, education, health, infrastructure, security. But then, if you don't have it, and now it's not a case that they come and meet you, and you say, oh, they already know you. They know your, they know, they have your fingerprint. If you have, if you evade your taxes, that's a different thing, but the system now know you exist. And now, once the seminar, you're not talking about consumer core. The MTD was talking about digital consumption economy. Yes, we need to expand, but for all the education, we're consuming it now, right as I talk to you. We've built that. We've built that ecosystem. We now have a Nigeria repository data bank that now has today It would, because I had, somebody spoke to me a few, just about one and a half years ago, but look how we've done, how well we've done so quickly. She ran one of the, she runs one of the biggest HR company in Nigeria. She said, I don't even know how to do background checks. I don't, look, we're taking this thing with levity. Identity management, it's everything. She said, "I don't even know." Once you've seen the scope of the problems, you now see the solution as they're coming in so seamlessly as we expand our database. She said, "I don't even know. It's so hard to do background checks on people. The advocate, I have to wait two, three weeks to get to the university to confirm. Some of the times they don't respond." And I said, "Oh, I felt helpless." But fast forward. When I have, afterward, I feel big. I feel like a star. But it wasn't me, it was when the Bola Metinubu that said we have to pass the Nigeria data repository. Everything is there now. All your certificates, they can just go check, boom, validate, and look at that. Look at the amount of business that would open up into the future. So I can continue to talk and talk. And the biggest one of the DGCO and the entire NIMC, you've just, you're revolutionizing our country. Thank you so much.

Honorable Minister Tinji Alausa, I knew you would be the icing on the cake. I certainly knew you'd be the icing on the cake.

So, he's the only minister with the highest reforms under his belt. So he's done amazing. He deserves another round of applause. He's he's churned out so many many solutions, transformative, technology in the education sector and we're working hand in hand to be able to drive that. He's also a visionary and he's also someone to get to the work to make sure that things are done. You know, he's the ground running, making sure that we resolve and tackle all the issues around education that staff are, I'm, I'm citizens are having. So, when you look at how your certificate can be validated abroad. without someone, the university, the UK having to fly down to confirm it and how you can get it done seamlessly. Those are the conversations we're having. Those are the solutions that we're looking at. Thank you.

Thank you so much for that. Madam DGC. Well, on that note, before everybody disappears, we are rounding up. I thank you again for your time today. I think we've set a foundation for bigger conversations to be had. And from here, of course, the whole idea is for us to engage further, for us to network, for us to be able to carry these conversations beyond these four walls. From myself, Vumbai Mutinyi, Epeyong, thank you so much. It's been a pleasure. It's been a learning journey for me as well. I've had a lot of takeaways. from this session. However, I am not going to have the last word. I'm excited to hand over to Ms. Olatunbosun Akinosho, who's the technical advisor for legal for the National Identity Management Commission, NIMC. She will round up this evening, this afternoon. Goodness me, time difference. This morning to afternoon session. because we also will be playing some visuals to get you to have a better understanding of the new NIMC Act 2026. I thank you as well, NIMC, Madam Engineer, Abisay Akoka, Odusote, your excellencies, you have been fantastic hosts and I look forward to this message being carried forward back to the people in Nigeria who are looking forward to hearing it and of course to the rest of the world. Thank you so much.

All right, thank you, excellencies, distinguished guests. As we bring this session to a close, on behalf of the DG and MC, I want to thank everyone who took the time to join us here for this educative session. The conversations we've had today reaffirm something important, that digital identity is no longer a back office administrative matter. It is a foundational infrastructure for inclusion, for service delivery, and for the kind of trust that allows nation and institutions to work together. For want of time, we have done a very short overview of the NIMC Act. You're all welcome to watch and learn one or two. Thank you so much.

NIMC Act 2026. 19 years of identity transformation from civic registration to 2007 to 2026. A new era for national identity, digital trust and inclusion. One person, one identity, one trusted digital future. From DNCR to NIMC. In 1979, the Department of National Civic Registration was established under Decree No. 51. In 2007, the NIMC Act No. 23 created the Commission and moved Nigeria from card issuance toward a national identity management system. In 2026, a new act repeals and replaces that framework and modernizes the legal foundation for NIN, PKI, DPI, interoperability, data protection, and stronger anti-fraud measures. A visionary leader shaping Nigeria's digital identity future. Engineer Dr. Abisoye Coker Odusote, Director General and Chief Executive Officer of NIMC. Her vision treats identity as critical national infrastructure, supporting security, governance, inclusion, and Nigeria's digital future. Innovation, inclusion, collaboration, and delivery define the reform journey that culminated in the NIMC Act 2026. Leadership from vision to national transformation. Leadership is not simply about managing what exists. It is about seeing what Nigeria must become and building the institutions, systems, and partnerships required to get there. Under her leadership, NIMS has pursued expanded enrollment, stronger identity data integrity, interoperability, digital identity services, and broader inclusion. A historic day on the 26th.