By Engr. Garba Balarabe
With the global trend on digitalization and the paradigm shift from analog to digital technology, the need to pay more attention and embrace digital identification of citizens and corporate organizations for the full realization of ease-of-doing -business can never be over emphasized.
Global economies and indeed Nigeria’s economic reforms agenda were all geared toward digitalization for optimum e-governance and finances as ways and means of ease of doing business.
At present, our total National Identification Number (NIN) enrollment in Sokoto state stood at less than 20 percent of the entire population. This pauses a very serious challenge for the implementation of various government policies and programmes because the necessary data and information required for dispensing social interventions and provisions of adequate security for the protection of lives and properties of citizenry are grossly inadequate if not totally absence.
The COVID-19 pandemic and it’s consequences on the world economy and the need to dispense palliatives to the people to cushion the devastating effects of the virus, justify the needs for digital identification that is unique and verifiable for social interventions.
The establishment of Ease of Doing Business Council (EODBC) by Governor Aminu Tambuwal is a right step in the right direction. With the current digitalization, harmonization and integration of existing data captured by all government agencies into one single National Identity Database (NIDB) in the country, effort should be exerted toward massive enrollment of people in the state.
More so, the state government can leverage the ongoing identity ecosystem championed by the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), to register more people and create employment opportunity for our teeming unemployed youths as well as boost the internally generated revenue of the state.
The National Identity Management Commission in the state should be supported with all it takes to open more enrollment centres in the nooks and crannies of the state, more especially the local government councils that do not have a functional enrollment centre.
Also, a state of emergency on National Identification Number (NIN) enrollment should be declared to enroll all indigenes of the state in to the national identity database (NIDB).
With this development, Sokoto state will, in no distant future champion the ease of doing business with full optimization of digital Identity as a centre stage for development.
Balarabe is Sokoto State Coordinator of NIMC
