OP ED: Nigeria's New National ID Card, What's A Nation's Identity Worth?

One of the high points of the news in Nigeria last week, was the announcement of the New National Identity Card launched by the federal Government, through the Nigerian Identity Management Commission.

The card allows handlers effect payments and other financial transactions, stores their biometric data  and also serves as a means of identification. The cards will be issued to Nigerians, 16 years and older, and are expected to serve as voting cards in the 2019 elections.

While it was flagged off by the president himself with a lot of fanfare and enthusiasm by its core sponsors and promoters, it was greeted with outrage

by a significant number of Nigerians. Interestingly, the news about the cards is not so new. Rewind one year and three months backwards, May 2013 to be more precise, Fast Company had published an Article titled "Nigeria's Futuristic ID Cards Are Also Debit Cards." The article, which was a report on the announcement about the card at the World Economic Forum, began by saying: “The latest in financial innovation is coming from Nigeria”. 

While the multipurpose card is not an innovation in and of itself- it has been used in Malaysia and India- it may be argued that this is an innovation- if innovation includes doing an old thing in a new market- in this case the Nigerian market. What might be a really unique feature of the card though is its being branded by a private financial institution, as far as I am aware, this has never been done before.

The writer of the Fast Company article was thankful from the onset that the said innovation did not involve Internet scams but involved the government partnering with private institutions. Fast forward to today, however, it appears that it is the Nigerian people feeling scammed by their own government.

In trying to answer the question as posed in my title, I looked to the end users to try to identify common needs and threads in the outrage; the most common concerns I noticed were for issues springing from or relating to:

• General distrust of Government Policy
• Invasion of Privacy
• Western/ Wall Street Control & Neo-Slavery
• Loss of National Identity
• And Anticipation of the Fulfillment of Apocalyptic Prophecy :) 

While, I believe that there are major intellectual property and innovation implications with all the aforementioned concerns, I would like to zero in on loss of identity.

I can understand the government launching a multipurpose ID card - it makes sense in an increasingly connected world and in a country with major inefficiency issues, inadequate data and serious security concerns.

I can begin to understand the government partnering with a foreign institution with high technical competence; even though I expect that there are indigenous Nigerian companies (E.g. CHAMS, Interswitch or some lesser-known company) who can at least drive the process. Malaysia did so with its own resources. This is key, if only to protect National sovereignty and security. I can-not, however, understand why the National ID card has to be branded with the “MasterCard” Logo.

As an Intellectual Property Lawyer who once worked as an advertising accounts manager, I have come to understand the importance of brands not just in building corporate value, but the value of nations too. We are all too familiar with the sponsored adverts on CNN selling different countries on their various value propositions- “Malaysia Truly Asia”, “Incredible India” e.t.c. Branding is clearly a way in which nations can begin to innovate and create value.

Central to branding is the concept of identity. So when we ask what a country’s brand is, we are asking what that country’s identity is. While brands are not symbols, they are aided by symbols, from which our minds make associations (positive or otherwise.)

One of the key symbols of a Nation's brand, like its international passport, is its citizen’s identity card. This makes branding any National ID, with the logo of any private company a bit difficult for me to get my head around. While this will certainly boost the Mastercard brand value, I am not sure where that leaves the Nation on the brand scale.

According to a news report I read, a rep of the Nigerian Identity Management Commission was reported as asking what was wrong with branding the National ID card with the Mastercard Logo.

I am not sure what my response would have been if he had asked me directly, but for now suffice to say:  Let us not lose our national identity, in the process of identifying our nationals.

©Ese Oraka

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Ese Oraka is a Lawyer and Business Designer. He has extensive knowledge and experience in IP and Business Law, Innovation Management and Business Model Design. He is a founding partner at Adelphi Consulting. You can find him on - Twitter: @eseoraka, Facebook: /ese.oraka.9, or email info@adelphionline.