The National Identity Management Commission, NIMC, has warned the general public about individuals and groups who position themselves around its offices nationwide to scam unsuspecting Nigerians.
The Commission, however, said that these criminals were being arrested and prosecuted according to the law and have no connection, whatsoever, with the NIMC.
The Director-General and Chief Executive Officer of NIMC, Engr. Abisoye Cokeer Odusote, gave the warning during a media interaction session in Abuja on Friday.
“We have a lot of scammers around NIMC offices and we try to clamp down on these people,” the Director-General said.
“When you talk of data bridges, we don’t have data bridges internally. Nigeria is known to have one of the best databases in the world.
“Data bridges sometimes could also be self-inflicted. For instance you have a company outside that can create a NIN for you. You develop a software, a system and say you want to create these things.
“The problem is you are generating fake NINs for people and this data is not coming to my server. A lot of people are being scammed.
“So we now have an influx of people coming to the office, telling us that they have registered but didn’t appear on the system.
“They’ve paid money to scammers and have been scammed. They’ve paid money to people who don’t have any connection with NIMC.
“Sometimes when we have a situation like Express Verify and all the other ones, we do have them picked up and when you sit down with them and go through their systems, carrying out thorough investigation, you’ll find out they have no connections with NIMC.
“The country is tough so they’ve come up with bigger ways to scam people. We have a lot of these issues,” he added.
She also spoke on the harmonization of multiple SIM cards by an individual and tying them to the National Identity Number, NIN, saying this would help in the fight against insecurity, especially terrorism and kidnapping.
“Another issue that is out there is that of multiple SIM cards. So what we are doing now is trying to tie up those SiM cards. This would go a long way to curb terrorism and issues like kidnapping.
“To address the NIN-SIM Linkage, we have a joint task force within the counter terrorism centre which is under the office of the National Security Adviser in conjunction with the NCC,” she said.