A Civil Society Organisation, Laws and Rights Awareness Initiative, has asked the Federal High Court in Abeokuta to stop the digital identification cards being introduced by the National Identity Management Commission, NIMC, to replace the plastic National ID cards.
The suit follows NIMC’s recent announcement that it is dumping plastic ID cards for digital identification.
In the suit, the incorporated trustees of the LRAI contended that the NIMC software is not secure and will breach the rights of Nigerians to privacy under Section 37 of the Consitution.
Counsel for the CSO, Olumide Babalola, told the court that the NIMC neglected to conduct a data protection impact assessment before embarking on the digital identification project.
He added that the NIMC also failed to file a data protection compliance audit report with the National Information Technology Development Agency, NITDA, before uploading the personal data of Nigerians on their insecure software application.
One Adedayo Ade-Rufus, deposed to an affidavit that “barely 48 hours after the release of the software by the respondent, Nigerian data subjects started complaining via social media about a data breach and malfunctioning of the respondents’ software application as well as the leakage of their personal data to the entire world”.
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