A digital social enterprise, Paradigm Initiative, has countered the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), insisting that the data of Nigerians remain compromised and available for sale online.
Paradigm Initiative’s boss, Gbenga Sesan, stated this while appearing on a programme by NewsCentral television.
Gbenga Sesan said in spite of the assertion by NIMC that the data of Nigerians “has not been compromised”, the reality is that many sites are still hawking the data till date.
It would be recalled that the NIMC recently reacted to widespread concern about the integrity of the facility holding Nigerians’ data, especially following the revelation that websites like anyverify.com were selling such data which NIMC and other government-authorised agencies collected.
NIMC, which issues the national identity number and handles Nigeria’s national database, blamed the violation on the carelessness of Nigerians who upload their personal data to such websites.
“NIMC advises Nigerians to avoid giving their data to unauthorised and phishing sites. This poses the danger of data harvesting.
“NIMC urges the public to disregard any claims or services these websites offer and should not give their data as they are potentially fraudulent and data provided by the public on such websites are gathered and stored to build the data services they illegally provide,” NIMC said in a statement by its Head of Corporate Communications, Kayode Adegoke.
Gbenga Sesan described this assertion as weak in the face of available information.
According to him, the information available online carried the imprint of NIMC, suggesting that they were obtained from their database.
Sesan says to prove how easy it was to obtain anybody’s data, Paradigm Initiative did a simple exercise of trying to obtain the data of the Minister of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy, Dr Bosun Tijani, and they were successful.
According to him, PI obtained the minister’s personal record for a mere N100.
He claimed that PI even obtained the personal data of Vincent Olatunji, the National Commissioner of the Nigerian Data Protection Commission (NDPC), the body responsible for protecting Nigerians’ data.
“This alarming development presents a major breach of the fundamental rights to privacy, a breach of data privacy rights and poses significant risks to individuals and the national economy,” Paradigm Initiative said.
Sesan said while some of the fingered websites had gone offline following the outcry, there were several others still in the business of providing Nigerians’ sacred data for a token.
Earlier in the year, Vincent Olatunji, confirmed that the commission was investigating 17 major cases of data breaches and violations in the country.
Watch Gbenga Sesan’s interview here.
