FG has introduced virtual national identification number (NIN) tokens.
The Federal Government has introduced a suite of digital Tokens to replace the aging NIN slip and polycarbonate card.
The Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Isa Pantami said this at stakeholders workshop on the National Identification Number (NIN) Tokenization Solution organized by National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) in Abuja.
He said the government adopted the solution to ensure the privacy of personal identifiable information of individuals during verification transactions and to reduce incidences of illegal retrieval, usage, transfer, and storage of NIN.
The Minister who was represented by the Director-General of NIMC, Aliyu Abubakar said the full implementation begins on Jan. 1. He said the tokenization solution was customized to protect personal identifiable information and to protect the sanctity as well as the sensitivity of the NIN issued by NIMC to registered individuals.
“One of the benefits of the virtual NIN is to ensure no third party may carry out any verification, hiding behind a proxy (and without the knowledge of the NIMC, being the Custodian of Identity). ”
And also generated Token or Virtual NIN is unintelligent, completely random with no correlation to the NIN and cannot be reverse engineered, even by a Quantum Computer.
“The NIN holder is the only exclusive issuer of NIN and cannot be delegated, “Pantami said.
He said anonymization was also catered for with the attachment of the UserID of the verifier to every verification request, adding that no NIN, no verification. Pantami said NIN tokens are MDA or merchant specific and expire after a set period of time, saying that a token generated for company A cannot be utilized by company B. Abubakar said that the aim of the programme was to rub minds with stakeholders to ensure understanding of the product and buy-in by all.