Digital tokens to replace NIN slip in Nigeria

Digital tokens will replace the old National Identification Number slip and polycarbonate card as means of identification in Nigeria from January 1, 2022.

The Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Isa Pantami, disclosed this at a stakeholders’ workshop on the NIN Tokenization Solution held by the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) on Wednesday in Abuja.

He said the government adopted the solution to ensure the privacy of personal identifiable information of individuals during verification transactions and to reduce incidences of illegal retrieval, usage, transfer, and storage of NIN.

The minister, who was represented at the workshop by the Director-General of NIMC, Aliyu Abubakar, said the tokenization solution was customised to protect personal identifiable information and sensitivity of the NIN issued by the commission to registered individuals.

Pantami said: “One of the benefits of the virtual NIN is to ensure no third party may carry out any verification, hiding behind a proxy (and without the knowledge of the NIMC, being the Custodian of Identity).

“And also generated Token or Virtual NIN is unintelligent, completely random with no correlation to the NIN and cannot be reverse engineered, even by a Quantum Computer.

“The NIN holder is the only exclusive issuer of NIN and cannot be delegated.”

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