ECS Validation: NSITF Partners NIMC to Link Enrollees Data to NIN

By Chinedu Echianu

The Nigeria Social Insurance Trust Fund (NSITF), has entered into a partnership with the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), to integrate data sharing on their portal; and ensure easy validation of data of workers who are registered under the Employees Compensation Scheme (ECS).

The essence of the collaboration is to ensure that the bio-data of the employees, under the ECS are easily validated or verified through their National Identify Number (NIN).

The Managing Director of NSITF, Barrister Oluwaseun Faleye spoke on the importance of the collaboration when he led a delegation of NSITF management on a courtesy visit on the Director General of NIMC, Engineer Abisoye Coker-Odusote, on Tuesday.

According to Barrister Faleye, the partnership will help improve NSITF’s efficiency and enhance its processes as regards database to broaden social security.

He pointed out that the research and data being gathered by NIMC across the country, “will help our demography on Employees’ Compensation Scheme.”

The NSITF MD said: “this collaboration will help bring sanity to the identity sector. We must harmonize all data as regards ECS. Nobody can be registered to the scheme except they are registered and captured under NIN. Today in Nigeria, to get a passport your NIN must be verified. So, we must adopt the same measure to seamlessly get adequate and accurate data of all employees under the scheme.”

He stressed that he was on the visit with his management team to further the partnership and collaboration between the two institutions in order to help increase efficiency and service delivery.

He said, “The Employees’ Compensation Scheme, is designed to provide compensation for employees who have suffered injuries, death or disabilities as a result of work. Very crucial to that service is really identity verification and the data management relating to identity verification.

“We feel that a partnership with your organization will further enhance our ability to provide that service much more efficiently, particularly in the areas of access to the national database where we can identify eligible individuals for not only the ECS service but even in conceptualizing broader based social security initiatives.”

Faleye, further noted that the NSITF considers the partnership very useful and important as it would give the Fund the ability to really undertake verification, particularly for those that are already captured under the ECS.

In his words: “The right and proper data regarding what we do will be very helpful. But beyond that is the message that our collaboration will also give out there. Not only to our stakeholders but to also encourage a broader based adoption of NIMC services in various such points.”

He added, “you can also help us in mapping out our services, demographics of services and how to push them out much more for that.”

Further giving insight into the proposed initiative and the impact it would have on the economy, Faleye, posited, “having data and collecting data is one thing. The impact of that data on our day-to-day activities is another thing. And if the data management entity does not collaborate to ensure that different service providers are able to access that data and allow citizens to use that data in a manner that effectively improves their lives, it won’t make a difference. That’s why we think it’s important for us to collaborate in this way.”

To this end, he called for joint advocacy relating to technology inclusion and data inclusion generally in one.

In her response, the Director General of NIMC, Engineer Abisoye Coker-Odusote, assured the NSITF of the support of NIMC to actualize the collaboration.

In her words: “We understand that the need is very critical to enabling access to services across the board. This is all we do on a daily basis, so we will definitely hand the IT team over to our own IT group for them to just collaborate and immediately form a working group together and we can work out the case around this integration.”

She added, “I will set a timeline for us to ensure that proper integration is done from a week to date and then we can definitely add this to each of our achievements. We could possibly have a press conference at some point in time.”