LAGOS, Nigeria – The National Identity Management Commission, NIMC has said that the NIN slips circulating online  allegedly  harvested by some groups are fake.

Officials of NIMC, Head Corporate Affairs, Mr. Kayode Adegoke and Director IT/DD NIMC, Mr. Lanre Yusuf made the assertion while speaking on Arise News on Wednesday.

Adegoke insisted that the so-called NIN slips  online have nothing to do with the commission, adding that the multipurpose smart NIN card under process has security features that cannot be harvested by anybody since it requires authentication. 

According to him, the NIN has both fingerprint and Iris(Facial) recognition authentication embedded in the chips, adding that when launched, it  can only be printed on request by the owner, stressing that Nigeria has the highest database of NIN in Africa, which he said is secured and that the commission will never relent when it comes to its mandate of securing the identity of Nigerians.

Also speaking, Lanre Yusuf asserted that the NIN is whare-housed  in CLOUD and on a database domiciled in Nigeria adding  that the data is secured even during interagency transfers and that it cannot be stolen since it has to be verified at point of transaction by fingerprint, Iris and other biometrics . 

Yusuf added that the Director General of NIMC, Mr. Abisoye Coker-Odusote has paid visit to the Nigeria Data Protection Agency and relevant security agencies  yo address the issues of fake NIN harvested by questionable websites. He added that the websites spewing up these fake NIN slips are already exiting the world wide web.