thisday0520

THISDAY • WEDNESDAY, MAY 20, 2015
BUSINESSWORLD
29
INTERVIEW
Onyemenam: Only People with Integrity Should
Manage National ID Card Infrastructure
The National Identity Management Commission was recently embroiled in a
faceoff with aggrieved unionists who protested the sack of their colleagues. In this
interview with journalists, the Director General/CEO, NIMC, Chris Onyemenam,
clarifies the issues. James Emejo was there. Excerpts:
The National Identity Management Commission
(NIMC) has been facing some
labour issues. What is really the crux
of the matter?
The main issue is that some members of
staff who falsified their service records and
thus have been profiting from that fraud were
asked to go on account of a disciplinary process
recently concluded. The issues at stake are
fake appointment, promotion, conversion,
and advancement letters and NIMC have
had to follow the process as laid down in the
rules and regulations for the Public Service to
deal with such cases. The staff members had
the opportunity for fair hearing, which is a
Disciplinary Committee, set up to determine
the extent of the fraud but they choose to go
to court. It didn’t start yesterday, it didn’t
start in 2014, it started in 2012, when the
commission began the process of absorption of
the Department of National Civic Registration
(DNCR) staff and the payment of promotion
arrears, which in itself started 2008.
And so when they went to court in mid-2014
to try to stop the process, we obeyed the
court order and stopped. After seven to eight
months, the case came to a close and the
Commission won at the National Industrial
Court. The court had decided that it was
not possible for the Court to interfere with
an administrative or a disciplinary process
between an employee and an employer, and
therefore, the Union, seeking an intervention
of the Court to stop such a process on its
behalf was an anomaly. We then took our
time, to invite them again, this time in 2015 to
come and clear themselves from the allegations
following the queries issued, and some of
them came, and a few were exculpated, and
have since been issued their proper placement
letters. Other felt it was till a court issue and
failed to avail themselves the opportunity of
an appearance that in its self is a violation
of a public service rule.
There are others who did not come and
somehow, felt that Management should allow
them to continue to profit from what we call
a fraudulent act on their side. Which is not
appropriate. By the way, we have reported
the criminal aspect of this issue to the police.
This is what is required of us because the
criminal aspect of their conduct is not for us
to deal with. It is the administrative aspect
that has to do with discipline that is our
responsibility, and we have gone through
the whole process. There are public sector
institutions that are supposed to help ensure
that indeed an adequate and appropriate fair
hearing were present at the disciplinary committee
sittings: the office of the Secretary to the
Government of the Federation (SGF), the Office
of the Head of Civil Service of the Federation
(OHCSF), Federal Civil Service Commission
and he Federal Character Commission were
all duly represented.
However, the Union, representing staff
members have decided for whatever reasons to
resist the outcome of the disciplinary process,
suggesting that they encourage such fraudulent
acts, and clearly want to divert attention from
the major facts and issues at hand.
Where these staff not employed under
your watch?
No. This set of staff, were not employed
by NIMC. They were among those whom
the Commission had to take over from the
defunct DNCR and essentially, if you take
over the assets and liabilities of an institution,
it is only proper that you look into the quality
of the assets and liabilities you have inherited,
to determine whether the ownership you are
now being conferred with by virtue of the
Onyemenam
provisions of the Act that made it possible is
acceptable. That enables you to decide on the
next issues: trainings postings, redundancy,
recruitments, among others.
For these set of staff members, however,
it has nothing to do with whether they are
competent, whether they needed training, or
whether they could fit into the new scheme.
It had more to do more with the character of
the person we are talking about. Because if
you could falsify your own service records,
and you expect to be given the responsibility
to attend to and manage and operate personal
information and the collection, processing and
use of database that people should rely upon, it
takes a lot away from the entire National Identity
Management System (NIMS) infrastructure.
If you have a character issue of that nature,
it is indeed a huge issue if someone with a
questionable integrity is the gatekeeper of the
infrastructure that should help us achieve a
secure identity system and that is the crux of
the issue. The dilemma is what to do with a
staff member who has put in several years
of service including years during which he
profited from fraudulent act he perpetrated
which represents his character as inimical to
the safety and future of the project.
So why did your management choose
now to swing into action?
Really not sure your question is couched
rightly, but here is the answer. This process
started long ago. It was preceded by at least
three verification exercises. First was the
one we did in collaboration with the service
providers approved by the Federal Executive
Council in 2008 to enable us know the assets
we were taking over in terms of numbers
and categories. That led to the elimination
of what we may refer to as ‘ghost workers’
because they didn’t turn up for verification.
Second was when they were to be sent back
to the office of the Head of Civil Service, since
they were pool staff. Then there was a third
verification exercise which was jointly don with
the office of the Head of the Civil Service of
the Federation which was successfully done
and brought out conclusively, the issues on
which they were given opportunity to explain.
That opportunity was given in June 2014 and
the sitting of the Disciplinary Committee was
delayed by the court action for about eight
months s mentioned before. It was after the
ruling of the court which was in our favour
that we subsequently recommended the process.
It happen to b now –March-April 2015. The
Board gave its approval only last two week.
What would you have done if you were
in my shoes?
I cannot because I am about to end my tenure
in a couple of months, refuse to do my job
properly, and thus pass on a liability or leave
behind an organisation and infrastructure that
will simply have an unintended consequence
for my successor. One of the most important
reasons why we embarked on the evaluation
of the quality of the assets we took over, was
first to be sure of what we were inheriting. The
second thing is that if you want the unique
identification system to be globally recognised
and acceptable, we needed to benchmark our
service and organizational infrastructure in
terms of deployment and processes to accepted
standards globally and one of the tools or index
used is the information security management
system.
There are various levels of certifications for
identity and database management infrastructure:
the data centre, the data capture, network,
connectivity, etc., and what that shows when
you obtain these certifications simply put, is
that you have a very good and safe identity
management infrastructure. We wanted to
ensure that that was in place, because one
thing that can make you loose your certification
overnight is if you have questionable integrity,
and so we were always conscious of the need
for background checks to be conducted as
fast as possible so why leave these ones that
we started to work on long ago because I am
leaving office in about six months from now?
It behooves on me as a responsible custodian
to ensure that I am leaving behind a safe
infrastructure, and these former colleagues
wouldn’t help to ensure the safety of that
infrastructure and it is inconsistent with the
certification programmes that we have spent
and labored so much to achieve so we needed
to address this difficult choices and decisions
to be made. Sur, it was difficult, but it have to
find a way of making things work differently.
Just not that this issue didn’t start yesterday,
and it’s not like I am in a hurry to conclude
the process. After all, the decision of the court
which was in our favour was obtained on
December 5th, 2014, and here we are today,
May 11th, 2015. If I had wanted to quickly get
it done, I would have done so in December.
Third, government is a continuum that I am a
Director General today and due to leave office
November 27th, 2015 does not mean that I
shouldn’t do what the Commission can do
now. It is left to my successor to come in and
say, this is not consistent with the rules and
the regulations, he will still follow a process.
And as long as we have followed the process,
I really didn’t think there was any need, or
was it right to pass on the problem.
One of the allegations of the aggrieved
unionist is that you want to sack their
colleagues so you can recruit your cronies.
How true is this allegation?
Well, if I want to sack them and recruit
my cronies, then the next person will sack
those people and recruit his/her cronies
and the vicious circle goes on. That is not
public service operates please. That is not
how countries develop, and that is not how
institutions are built. We didn’t and I am
not in the habit of doing that. There is a clear
government policy which we adhered to. We
advertised, and went to the Federal character
commission and obtained the allocations for
all the states and we adhered to that. In spite
of the allocations, we still made sure that
those who we picked up the slots for each
states were people who merited it in terms of
qualifications, age, experience, relevance etc.,
and so, there is no truth in that allegation.
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