NIMC Denies Data Breach, Says It’s Upgrading Website

NIMC Denies Data Breach, Says It’s Upgrading Website

By Emma Okonji

The National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) has refuted claims making the rounds that its website crashed yesterday, insisting that it’s untrue.

Some Nigerians who tried to log on to NIMC’s website to complete their NIN enrolment, had difficulties in accessing the website, suspecting that the website may have crashed, due to rush by Nigerians who visited the website to enrol for NIN in order to beat the initial deadline of December 30, before it was extended to January 19 for those with NIN and February 19 for those that are yet to get their NIN.

But NIMC, yesterday, issued a statement, clarifying that the commission was only upgrading its website to make it resilient for easy access.

According to the statement signed by the Head, Corporate Communications at NIMC, Mr. Kayode Adegoke, “We would like to bring to the attention of the members of the general public that the purported breach of the National Identity Database going round the social media is false, a hoax, and of mischievous intent.

The NIMC would like to assure the public that there have been no such breaches or incidents. Investigations on the alleged data dump were found to be non-existent in the National Identity Database.

“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 guarantees the security of the National Identity Database through various layers of security and can assure that no data was breached.”

NIMC therefore enjoined members of the general public to refrain from spreading false reports on the purported data breach.

Adegoke told THISDAY that the commission was upgrading its network to serve the public better and that the difficulty in accessing the website as experienced by some Nigerians must have been caused by the system upgrade.

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