By 
STATEMENT BY COMMUNICATIONS AND DIGITAL ECONOMY
Following the recent development in which the United States of America (USA) placed a temporary migrant visa restriction on Nigeria and five (5) other countries, the Honourable Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Dr Isa Ali Ibrahim Pantami FNCS, FBCS, FIIM today chaired the inaugural meeting of the SUBCOMMITTEE ON CITIZEN DATA HARMONIZATION.
His Excellency, President Muhammadu Buhari GCFR in his wisdom to address concerns raised by the United States Government which led to the temporary restriction, inaugurated a committee on CITIZEN DATA MANAGEMENT.
The Committee was charged with the mandate to;
- To review the recent temporary Visa restrictions on Nigerian Citizens by USA.
- Develop and implement systems and processes that will address the security concerns raised by USA
- Harmonization of all multiple data sources in Nigeria into a single database.
It is on this backdrop the Tech Savvy, result-oriented and focused Honorable Minister, Dr Pantami, an associate Professor in Information Technology was charged with the responsibility to chair the SUB COMMITTEE ON CITIZEN DATA HARMONIZATION.
The terms of reference of the Pantami’s led committee includes:
- Identify all MDAs holding Citizen Data including biometrics;
- Obtain detailed brief on data held in terms of nature, size, available facility and capacity of personnel;
- Review nature, quality, facilities of each MDA and capacity of personnel;
- Propose strategies for harmonization, integration linkage as may be appropriate;
- Estimate the timeline for full- data integration; and
- Estimate resource requirements.
Other members of the committee include; The Central Bank Governor of Nigeria, Chief Executive Officers of National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Federal Road Safety Commission(FRSC), Director, Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS) among others.
