By CHARLES IWUOHA

The Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security (FMAFS) and the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) have announced their collaboration aimed towards introducing a National Identity Number (NIN) to actualise the farmer registry and Government 2 people (G2P) card initiative.

This project, according to FMAFS and NIMC, is designed to address the Federal Ministry?s immediate challenges of identity and authentication, required to deliver government services efficiently and accurately.

This is contained in a statement issued on Thursday by Dr Joel Oruche, Director of Information, FMAFS, and Dr. Kayode Adegoke, Head, Corporate Communications, NIMC.

The statement reads: ?This initiative aligns with the government?s commitment in improving transparency, efficiency and ensuring inclusivity under the President?s Renewed Hope Agenda, of which food security is a primary objective. Its aim is to eradicate the challenges of FMAFS in efficiently delivering well-intended government programmes to the targeted citizens.

?To this end the FMAFS, guided by Mr President?s circular on the use of National Identification Number (NIN) by all MDAs in the provision of government services to beneficiaries, has partnered with NIMC to leverage the National Identity Management System to power the Ministry?s farmer registry by the linkage of the NIN and attendant biometric identity data of each farmer to their farmland, as well as all necessary supporting data relating to that farmer, including the size of the holding, type of crops or livestock.

?Connecting this NIN-backed registry to the G2P card will thereby allow for provision of targeted and ring-fenced aid to the farmMCers and other recipients of government benefits under the FMAFS programmes.

?The G2P card ecosystem is an initiative that allows for the issuance of NIN-enabled cards by Federal Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs), and enables the use of the card?s frontend by these MDAs for their respective programmes.

?The key feature of the ecosystem is a biometrics card with multiple wallets that can provide verifiable identification and also process transactions without internet connectivity, allowing the Ministry to support beneficiaries in the most remote locations. The card is unique to each citizen, and every Nigerian and legal resident is eligible to obtain it, banked or unbanked. The G2P card will be owned by and personalised to each MDA that adopts its usage.

?By adopting this card, FMAFS is able to uniquely identify all farmers, provide multiple agriculture services through the card in a manner that eliminates risks and fraud and also provide end to end visibility within the agriculture value chain thus enabling scalability.

?Agriculture services to be provided through the card include farmer financing, input distribution, farmland mapping linked to identity, extension services monitoring & evaluation and agency banking as well as multiple types of third party services.

?Within this framework, NIMC will provide the foundational identity ecosystem to FMAFS, who as the owner of both the farmer registry and G2P card scheme will provide government services via the issued G2P cards, tailored to the needs of the farmers supported by the Ministry at the national and sub-national levels.

?The G2P card has a large capacity in-card chip that stores beneficiary identity, know your customer (KYC), picture, and fingerprints.

?In addition, it has two applets and several wallets dedicated to multiple types of programmes, which provides needed flexibility and channels for multiple interventions to be implemented against the same unique identity.

?This flexibility is required to address infrastructure challenges limiting identity verification and digital evidence of beneficiary access when implementing government programmes.

?The G2P biometric cards are processed through a bespoke but interoperable biometrics Point of Sale (POS) acceptance device, which requires biometrics to access and operate.

?This technological approach allows the Ministry to better deliver services and programmes in any location regardless of infrastructure challenges.

?The card will operate as a digital wallet/ prepaid card and it is tailored for government transactions such as subsidies, loans, welfare disbursement, pensions and other activities carried out by FMAFS.

?NIMC?s role is to provide the ecosystem with foundational biometric identity in the NIN to ensure that the card and its attendant benefits are linked securely and accurately to the beneficiary and the beneficiary only. FMAFS retains their statutory rights and ownership of data generated.

?With the G2P ecosystem, any programme implemented by the Ministry can now be administered independently and showcased through digitally enabled dashboards displaying key data on how each programmes have been efficiently implemented or otherwise.

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