The dynamism of the security challenges countries face all over the world has led nations to develop proactive measures and strategies to arrest their respective security challenges. Necessity they say is the mother of all invention and the managers of Nigeria are not ignorant of this fact.
Since the return to representative democracy in the country, the country has experience a mirage of security challenges across this time. These security challenges range from the destabilizing activities of non state actors like that of Boko Haram in the North East, the Niger Delta Militancy in the South South, the Farmers/Herders clashes in the Middle Belt, Banditry in the North and of late, the IPOB terrorist in the South East. This terrorist groups and agent of instability may differ in ideological orientation and motivation but one thing they share in common is their ability to leverage on existing technology in furtherance of their carnage enterprise – and this is where the introduction of the National Identification Number looms into relevance.
The NIN is a child of necessity. For years, Nigerians have been crying to the moon and back for the government to device creative methods of curtailing the numerous security challenges confronting the nation especially as these criminals expolit the loopholes in the telecommunications sector in furtherance of their evil agenda- not until the National Telecommunications Commission – acting under the mandate of the Minister of Technology and Digital Economy swiftly stepped in to fill the void – with the introduction of NIN.
With the introduction of NIN, Nigeria is progressively taking a step towards the actualization of solving the perennial challenge of having a national data base. With the NIN we can now have a real time track of every Nigerian, dead or alive – and this will equally assist policy makers in planning and budgeting as well as arresting the ugly cases of ghost workers in the civil service. While the Bank Verification Number attempted to do the same job of NIN, the major difference is that, the BVN is a policy that came be easily repealed by successive government but, the NIN is a law. The NIN is not the magic wand that would solve all of the security challenges of Nigeria but it’s certainly one progressive step towards addressing the issue of insecurity.
