The
National Pension Commission, has pledged to hasten the process of harmonising
and integrating the PENCOM database with the National Identity database to
ensure complete synergy
with the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC).
The Director General, PENCOM, Mrs. Chinelo Anohu-Amazu, was speaking when the Director
General/CEO of the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), Barrister Chris ‘E Onyemenam paid her a courtesy
visit at the PENCOM Headquarters last Wednesday 29th July, 2015 to further
review collaborations.
According
to Mrs. Anohu-Amazu, PENCOM is a sister
organisation to NIMC, and where we are now is a clear indication that we are working towards
the same goal and must work together, to ensure that our organisational roles and mandates are achieved seamlessly.
She noted
that PENCOM is poised to serve not only the pensioners of today, but the
contributors to the various pension funds who are they pensioners of tomorrow.
“There has always been a great need for proper identification and verification
in the pension industry to ensure little or no case of identity theft. It’s a
good thing that NIMC and PENCOM are poised to make a positive impact and contribute
to the country’s economy and development.
Mrs. Chinelo Anohu-Amazu further noted, “The
NIMC Idea in PENCOM’s estimation is a fabulous idea. Long before the inception
of the highly structured Pension industry that exist today, there has been a
fundamental need for a foundation Identity Database which all the Agencies and
private organisations can fall back on at any given time, and we are glad that
NIMC has put such structure on ground.”
She
explained that PENCOM is mandated by law to run its own Funtional database, but
will also ensure that the PENCOM database remains in harmony and in sync with
the foundation database of NIMC. “PENCOM has regularly engaged and will
continue to engage NIMC to ensure that we are in complete synergy with NIMC.”
“While
managing PENCOM's functional database, we strive to continually take cues from
NIMC's expertise in identity management and we are indeed excited about the
future as we continue to partner,” she said.
The
Director General, NIMC, in his response, noted that NIMC’s core mandate is
identity management. “The major reasons for identity theft and fraud related
activities in the country is the lack of record keeping. Over the decades,
Nigeria didn’t have an identity database, which made identity theft and fraud very
commonplace among Nigerians.”
He
stated that a lot of people are known to have multiple identities that they use
for varied reasons. “This is costing the Pension industry, the bank industry
and the likes, hundreds of millions of naira annually, thus the need for a
central database to check the number of times people change their names and
identities.
The
NIMC DG explained that with the National Identity Database now in place, every
individual who enrolls into the database is allowed to lie to the system just
once; because once the details are captured, it is stored against the
individual’s biometrics and headshot so that in the next 20 years or more, the
same details can be referred to with the help of the National Identification
Number (NIN).
“Cases
of ghost workers, falsification of age and names, fraud, identity theft, etc.,
are some of the problems faced in our industry that will be curtailed and
eliminated with a centralized identity database, replete with biometric
information,” he added.
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