“Why FG is planning on replacing BVN with NIN”

The Federal Government of Nigeria has disclosed its plans to replace Bank Verification Numbers with the National Identity Numbers, as stated by the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy Isa Pantami during a briefing of journalist following the inspection of the ongoing NIN registration at NIMC and other registration centres in Abuja.

Pantami made it clear that while the BVN is a regulator’s policy which only applies to bank account owners, the NIN is a law for nationals and legal residents in the country, stating the “strength of the law wherever you go is not the same with a policy of one institution.”

He also stated; ” I made a presentation to National Economic Sustainability Committee and I drew the attention of CBN Governor that we need to replace BVN with NIN because the BVN is a bank policy while NIN is a law.

“Because it has been established by law so the strength of the law wherever you go is not the same with a policy of one institution.

“Also, BVN is only applicable to those who have bank accounts but NIN is for every citizen and legal residents in the country. BVN is our secondary database while NIN and the database is the primary one in the country that each and every institution should make reference to NIMC.”

“That is why we came up with the Nigeria Data Protection Regulation that we always enforce and this is applicable to the database at our disposal,”

Pantami further added that Nigeria has 99.9% level of security in the entire database.

“We take care of it and make sure that security is excellent and we don’t allow anybody to compromise the content because it is a trust from our citizens given to us.”

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