This is Why the Federal Government is Planning on Replacing BVN with NIN

The Federal Government of Nigeria has revealed its plans to replace Bank Verification Numbers with the National Identity Numbers, as stated by the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy Isa Pantami during a briefing of newsmen following the inspection of the ongoing NIN registration at NIMC and other registration centres in Abuja.

Pantami made it clear that while the BVN is a regulator’s policy which only applies to bank account owners, the NIN is a law for nationals and legal residents in the country, stating the “strength of the law wherever you go is not the same with a policy of one institution.”

He also said “he had made a presentation to the National Economic Sustainability Committee and drew the attention of the Central Bank of Nigeria’s Governor on the need to replace BVN with NIN, Punch reports. BVN is our secondary database, while NIN and the database is the primary one in the country that each and every institution should make reference to NIMC.”

“That is why we came up with the Nigeria Data Protection Regulation that we always enforce and this is applicable to the database at our disposal,” Pantami added that Nigeria has 99.9% level of security in the entire database. “We take care of it and make sure that security is excellent and we don’t allow anybody to compromise the content because it is a trust from our citizens given to us.’’

He also stated that the reason for engaging private agents for the NIN enrollment corresponded with “global standard,” asking that NIMC focuses on “regulatory work and set the standards for biometrics registration, measuring of heights, standard for data to be collected and general verification.”