Engr. Aliyu Abubakar Aziz, immediate past director general/chief executive officer, National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), a seasoned Public Servant and Administrator, has been presented with an award, by the Secure Identity Alliance (SIA) Initiative as a founding member of the body and pioneer chairman of its Advisory Council.
Engr. Aliyu Abubakar Aziz
The event was held recently in Paris, France
The SIA observed that Engr. Aziz played the role well in ensuring universal interoperability framework and standards were formulated for the identity industry with the highest level of international acceptance/adoption by ICAO, and getting fair contractual/technology services implementation deals for the NIMC and other technology-dependent agencies in Nigeria in both the Public and Private sectors.
The positive outcome from that endeavour was the influencing of the European Economic Interest Groups under the SIA’s decisions on Nigeria and Africa as a whole.
As words engraved in the award stated, “Weather the headwinds, the tailwinds to propel you forward are over the horizon,” the Alliance described Engr. Aziz as an asset whose expertise and experience are yet to be fully utilised by the identity industry and therefore an asset in the horizon for the international community to draw from.
The Secure Identity Alliance (SIA) was formed by the public, private sectors and academics in the identity industry (government, researchers, technology and software developers and vendors), with the objectives to reduce or totally remove the scourge of “vendor lock-in” where an agency is tied to a contract for decades; promote interoperability between components, where it becomes mandatory for the product of one company to be able to talk to the products of a competitor or any other company that may have supplied or is intending to supply solutions to a government agency thereby eliminate the recurring decimal of unnecessary “support and maintenance” agreements (SMAs) described as just a means for these companies to filch as much as they can from Governments in Africa.
The Alliance’s objectives also include to provide clear and open Standards where architectures, designs and products are made available for anyone to inspect, without compromising proprietary work by the supplier; to reduce the colossal waste of scarce foreign exchange resources on repeated solutions where one can adequately serve the entire Country (or even continent of Africa); Permit Government agencies worldwide to sit on the Governing Board of the SIA to provide insight into the “pain points” of Nigerian and African Governments, thereby reducing the chances of the vendors making assumptions of the needs of these agencies (based on their own Western understanding of such issues).
Engr. Aziz served as the pioneer chairman of the SIA from inception in 2019 till July 24, 2023, when Engr. Bisoye Coka-Odusote was appointed to succeed him.
The former DG of NIMC also formally handed over the chairmanship position of the Alliance to his successor during the formal hand-over ceremonies.
The SIA has no political connotations, influences or even disguise as a “political think tank”. Membership of the Governing Board means that identity management and other related solutions must fit specific criteria before being promoted to Nigerian and African Governments.