National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), charged with providing Nigerians state-of-the-art identity card system and database system has upgraded its Automated Biometric Identification System (ABIS) first deployed in 2010 to 100 million capacity.
Mr. Anthony Okwudiafor, director, Corporate Communications, NIMC, said the ABIS when it was first deployed had only two bimodal functionalities – fingerprint and face, but a third functionality has been added which is ‘Iris’.
He said “Government had approved the upgrade to 70 million database record size on the two modal functionalities as part of the N30.066n billion three (3) year funding approved for the accelerated implementation of the back end component of the National Identity Management System (NIMS) in 2011. But the management of NIMC had been able to utilise the same funding to achieve a higher upgrade due to its cordial relationship with the service providers L1 identity Solutions, USA”.
This means that the NIMC will be able to process volume databases from institutions like INEC and NCC, since the ‘de-duplication’ system, the ABIS, now has a larger record size capacity capable of taking all the records. The ABIS is what enables the determination of unique identities in the database before the National Identification Number (NIN) is issued to an individual.
Okwudiafor further noted that the deployment plan includes an upscaling in a matter of hours to 200million whenever the Commission desires. This means that the ABIS infrastructure is currently the largest in Sub Saharan Africa. Already, eight (8) members of staff of NIMC have been trained on the use of the system which will be maintained in partnership with a local technology solutions firm and the Biometric Unit of the NIMC.
It is also an important step that the Commission has taken towards achieving its mandate of integrating identity databases in government agencies. The facility is already in use for the planned roll out of the National Identity smart card to Nigerians scheduled for the second quarter of 2013.