¶ Pain Points
¶ Preamble
Any person entitled to a passport issued by the Federal Republic of Nigeria, must provide a National Identification Number (NIN) as a part of the issuance process.
The NIN must be verified the names on the passport and gender must match EXACTLY the names offered by a NIN lookup from the National Identity Database (NIDB) at the NIMC.
¶ The Issues
- Many persons (especially those who newly enrolled for a NIN), oftentimes get to Immigration and are told “NIN has not dropped”.
This can be attributed to a high latency between when the person had enrolled and when the record eventually gets to the NIMC verification portal (called the NIN Verification Service or NVS). - A person may visit a Passport office at the Immigration Service with their NIN Slip and still be told “NIN has not dropped”.
¶ The Mitigation
The NIMC has now deployed a high-performance verification services Mobile Web Services (MWS) is a component of the National Identity Management System (NIMS) to provide an alternative to the existing one.
¶ Step 1
A person needs either the Improved NIN Slip or the NIMC MobileID Application and presents the same to an Immigration Officer at the Passport Office.
¶ Step 2
The Immigration Officer uses the MWS MobileID Application to scan the Barcode of either Digital Token and verifies that the information returned matches the document presented
¶ Step 3
The Immigration Officer logs into the MWS Portal using their own UserID (not the Passport customer) and an OTP from the App and looks for the PDF labelled with transactionid of the verification. Alternatively, the Officer may also look for the timestamp of the verification made.
¶ Step 4
The Immigration Officer may wish to print out the verification sheet to put in a file for references, and then provide service to the customer.
¶ Disclaimer
The National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) bears ABSOLUTELY NO RESPONSIBILITY WHATSOEVER where an individual appears and presents either Digital Token as their ID and the Immigration Officer DOES NOT follow the steps as provided above.
There MUST always be a log of the verification transaction - successful or otherwise to be acceptable by the NIMC.