The Bureau of Public Service Reforms (BPSR) has struck a deal between the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) and Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB) with the objective that NIMC will create a sole, central and reliable database for various activities and programmes yearly carried out by the later.

This was the highpoint of a meeting between the three Federal Government (FG’s) bodies at the NIMC Head Office in Abuja. He said “the aim of facilitating the partnership between JAMB and NIMC was to bring the agencies up to speed in line with the National Strategic Plan on Public Service Reforms.”

Speaking at the event, Mr. Dasuki Ibrahim Arabi, the Director-General of the Bureau, asserted that aside helping to curb the perpetration of crimes, a central national database which captures every data and information about the citizens enhance administrative efficiency for various agencies and government institutions.

“It is commendable that the Federal Government has adopted the NIMC identity registration as the official database for all Nigerians. This will help to curb so many malfeasances and fraudulent activities by persons whose intention is to circumvent established laws, regulations and professional ethics. Embarking on various registrations such Birth, School, WAEC, JAMB, university and NYSC registrations, aside been cumbersome, gives room for corrupt dealings to be perpetrated,” he said.

Mr. Arabi, expressed delight that the bridge their Bureau has built is being used by several organisations and institutions to actualize common national objective, stressing that the successful engagement between NIMC and JAMB and the anticipated impact will be positive for successive generations of Nigerians that will take the UTME exam.

On his part, Prof. Ishaq Oloyede, JAMB Registrar, explained that the partnership became necessary to ensure that candidates who were eligible to sit for the examination were captured by a reliable database.

Earlier, Mr. Aliyu Aziz Abubakar, the Director General of NIMC, said the commission got the approval of the Federal Executive Council mandating all private and government agencies to ensure that their data met NIMC standard.

Abubakar said the idea was to enable NIMC duplicate those data for national security and development, adding: “We have already got the approval of Federal Executive Council to ensure that private and government agencies that are already capturing data should capture to the standard set by NIMC so that we can duplicate those data. So, with the private and other government agencies into the picture, so we ensure that we have more than 10,000 centres so that every ward in Nigeria will have an enrolment centre”.