The National Identity Management Commission has uncovered 4,000 ghost workers on its payroll following a recently concluded biometric data capture exercise.
The Director-General, NIMC, Mr. Chris Onyemenam, said he was amazed that 4,000 out of the 10,300 employees of the commission were actually ghost workers.
He spoke with our correspondent after a strategic round-table meeting with financial institutions and electronic payment service providers in Lagos.
“We did biometric data capture for the employees of the commission and it was amazing to find out that out of the 10,300 employees on the payroll, 4,000 were ghost workers. We have also penciled down over 800 names of employees, who couldn’t come for the process,” he said.
The NIMC boss said eliminating the 4,000 ghost workers would help the commission save a lot of money.
He lamented that the ghost worker syndrome was a major problem in the civil service, adding that many of the ghost workers were believed to be operating across several ministries, departments and agencies of the government in the Federal Capital Territory.
Onyemenam, however, said the biometric data capture technology, which helped weed out the ghost workers of the commission, would be used for the country’s identity management project.
This would not only enhance identity management system in Nigeria, but both the public and the private sectors would be able to ascertain who they were dealing with at any point in time,” he said.
Onyemenam said the NIMC would begin the generation of unique National Identity Numbers for Nigerian citizens from August 1.
The numbers will be issued to all Nigerians over the next 60 months after the recipients’ biometric data would have been collected for national identity management purpose.
The NIMC boss said when the eleven-digit NINs were issued, they would be uploaded on chip-embedded multifunctional smartcards that would serve as national identity cards and e-Payment cards.
With the NIN, Onyemenam said the identity of every Nigerian would be ascertained and issues like identity theft and ghost worker phenomenon in the civil service would be forgotten.
He said the commission was in talks with the Central Bank of Nigeria, adding that the the apex bank would soon declare the NIN as a key element of the Know-Your-Customer requirement for any financial transaction in the country.
A Pakistani government agency, National Database and Registration Authority, which implemented the employees’ biometric registration for the commission, has also been contracted to facilitate system integration for the NIN project in the country.
“We have contracted NADRA, a system integrator, to provide integration services for the National Identity Management project. It is an end-to-end thing involving the duplication, card personalisation, PIN generation, back-up and disaster recovery infrastructure. With this, we will see web servers, storage system, software, hardware and middleware become integrated into a whole system, which is functional. “We have about 25 Nigerian engineers working with them,” Onyemenam said.
Click to signup for FREE news updates, latest information and hottest gists everydayThe Director-General, NIMC, Mr. Chris Onyemenam, said he was amazed that 4,000 out of the 10,300 employees of the commission were actually ghost workers.
He spoke with our correspondent after a strategic round-table meeting with financial institutions and electronic payment service providers in Lagos.
“We did biometric data capture for the employees of the commission and it was amazing to find out that out of the 10,300 employees on the payroll, 4,000 were ghost workers. We have also penciled down over 800 names of employees, who couldn’t come for the process,” he said.
The NIMC boss said eliminating the 4,000 ghost workers would help the commission save a lot of money.
He lamented that the ghost worker syndrome was a major problem in the civil service, adding that many of the ghost workers were believed to be operating across several ministries, departments and agencies of the government in the Federal Capital Territory.
Onyemenam, however, said the biometric data capture technology, which helped weed out the ghost workers of the commission, would be used for the country’s identity management project.
This would not only enhance identity management system in Nigeria, but both the public and the private sectors would be able to ascertain who they were dealing with at any point in time,” he said.
Onyemenam said the NIMC would begin the generation of unique National Identity Numbers for Nigerian citizens from August 1.
The numbers will be issued to all Nigerians over the next 60 months after the recipients’ biometric data would have been collected for national identity management purpose.
The NIMC boss said when the eleven-digit NINs were issued, they would be uploaded on chip-embedded multifunctional smartcards that would serve as national identity cards and e-Payment cards.
With the NIN, Onyemenam said the identity of every Nigerian would be ascertained and issues like identity theft and ghost worker phenomenon in the civil service would be forgotten.
He said the commission was in talks with the Central Bank of Nigeria, adding that the the apex bank would soon declare the NIN as a key element of the Know-Your-Customer requirement for any financial transaction in the country.
A Pakistani government agency, National Database and Registration Authority, which implemented the employees’ biometric registration for the commission, has also been contracted to facilitate system integration for the NIN project in the country.
“We have contracted NADRA, a system integrator, to provide integration services for the National Identity Management project. It is an end-to-end thing involving the duplication, card personalisation, PIN generation, back-up and disaster recovery infrastructure. With this, we will see web servers, storage system, software, hardware and middleware become integrated into a whole system, which is functional. “We have about 25 Nigerian engineers working with them,” Onyemenam said.
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