The Nigerian Identity Management Commission (NIMC) has debunked rumours of a breach of its database. This was revealed in a statement signed by the commission. This is coming after reports made the rounds that the commission’s database has been breached as a result of the damaged undersea cable that has led to internet downtime thus restricting the activities of telecom companies and banks.
According to the commission’s statement, there were reports of an alleged breach of data by a private organization, XpressVerify. XpressVerify was believed to be one of the companies licensed by the NIMC to provide NIN verification services.
However, the NIMC noted that while it offers NIN verification and other services through licensed partners, it had never licensed XpressVerify as one of its verification partners.
“The National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) received with concern news from some sections of the media pertaining to an alleged breach of citizens’ data by a private organization, XpressVerify. The Commission wishes to state that it offers NIN verification and other services through licensed partners. However, XpressVerify is not one of the Commission’s licensed partners.” the commission said.
The statement went on to assure Nigerians and other legal residents that there is no data breach of any sort occasioned by the damaged undersea cable and that citizens’ data is safe and secure in Nigeria’s National identity database.
The Director General and Chief Executive Officer of NIMC, Engr. Abisoye Coker-Odusote also ordered a comprehensive investigation into the matter to find out if any of the Commission’s Tokenisation verification agents has in any way breached the licensing agreement either directly or through any of their sub-licensees.
Damaged undersea cable may take 5 weeks
As countries across West and Central Africa continue to suffer internet downtime due to the damaged undersea cable, authorities in Ghana have revealed that fixing the damaged undersea cable and restoring full service would take at least 5 weeks.
Ghana’s National Communication Authority arrived at this conclusion after a meeting with four subsea cable landing service providers and telcos. The landing service providers include the Africa Coast to Europe (ACE), Equinix’s MainOne, South Atlantic 3, and the West Africa Cable System.
At the meeting, the landing service providers revealed the approximate location of the damage and noted that they had made arrangements to send repair vessels to the location.
“The cable landing service providers have indicated an estimated time frame of a minimum of five weeks for full-service restoration from the time the vessels are dispatched to the various locations”
Internet and telecommunication outages were reported across West and Central Africa last week, disrupting businesses across banks, mobile money transactions etc.
The cause of the disruption was revealed to be some damage to the international undersea cable supplying connectivity to the region. The damage, which according to MainOne was probably caused by some seismic activity in the seafloor, occurred somewhere around Senegal and Ivory Coast with similar damage around Portugal.
See also: Damaged SAT-3 ACE undersea cables undergoing repairs after rockfall incident
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