House Of Representatives Fails To Secure Arrest Of NIMC Director-General

There are growing concerns that the House of Representatives has yet to secure the arrest of the Director-General of the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), Abisoye Coker-Odusote, for her failure to appear before the chamber in relation to an ongoing investigation.

On February 12, 2025, the House of Representatives Committee on Public Petitions, chaired by Mike Etaba, threatened to issue an arrest warrant for Coker-Odusote after her alleged breach of a software development license agreement with Truid Limited.

Coker-Odusote, who was appointed by President Bola Tinubu in 2023, reportedly ignored the committee’s invitation for a hearing scheduled for March 13, 2025.

Naija News reports that the committee had been probing an agreement where Truid Limited financed, developed, and deployed a tokenisation system for NIMC without any financial contribution from the commission.

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In return, Truid Limited was to recover its investment through service provider patronage, with proceeds shared based on a predetermined ratio.

E.R. Opara, counsel for Truid Limited, claimed that the agreement was meant to run for 10 years, starting from the deployment of the software in 2021.

However, Opara accused Coker-Odusote of attempting to terminate the agreement shortly after her appointment, which led to the ongoing dispute.

Etaba, expressing frustration with Coker-Odusote’s defiance, had warned that the committee would seek an arrest warrant if she failed to attend the hearing on March 13.

He said, “If she fails to show up at the next hearing of this case, we will have no option other than to ask the Inspector-General of Police to bring her.”

He further added, “How can an official of government treat constituted authority with such levity? We can no longer condone such an attitude.”

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More than two weeks after the scheduled hearing on March 13, The Cable revealed that Coker-Odusote still has not honoured the invitation. It appears that the committee has not yet managed to secure a warrant for her arrest.

The NIMC tokenisation system, launched on December 22, 2021, was introduced by the federal government to enhance the privacy and security of personally identifiable information during verification transactions.

The solution was also intended to reduce the illegal retrieval, usage, transfer, and storage of National Identity Number (NIN) data.

In September 2021, former Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Isa Pantami, announced the approval of ₦25 billion by the Federal Executive Council (FEC) to upgrade and replace NIMC’s identity infrastructure.