The National Identity Management Commission says reports of a purported breach of the National Identity Database is false.
NIMC spokesman, Kayode Adegoke, made this known in a statement on Wednesday, titled, ‘NIMC Data Not Breached’.
The statement partly read, “The Commission investigated the data breach claim and found out that the database schema presented by the adversary does not tally with the existing schema of NIMC records.
The data being posted by criminals purporting to contain citizens’ information is fake.
“The NIMC would like to assure the public that there have been no such breaches or incidents. The NIMC guarantees the security of the National Identity Database through various layers of security and can assure that no data was breached.”
The Federal Government through the Nigerian Communication Commission had last week ordered telecommunications companies to deactivate telephone lines of subscribers who failed to link their phones to their National Identity Number.
Large crowd thronging the NIMC web portal for the process of obtaining their National Identity Number led to the crash of the portal on Monday.
Many people, who wanted to print the enrollment form, which is a major requirement for registering for the National Identity Number, were unable to do so and got stranded.
Some Nigerians have also expressed concerns for the privacy and safety of their data.
As of October, the total number of mobile network connections was 207.58 million, but currently, only 43 million Nigerians have NIN, thus 164 million telephone users are at the risk of being deactivated on January 19, 2021.