President Muhammadu Buhari has approved the appointment of Engr Aliyu Aziz Abubakar as the new Director General and Chief Executive Officer of the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC).
Aliyu Abubakar succeeds Barrister Chris Onyemenam, whose tenure has expired – and takes immediate effect.
A statement by Abdul-Hamid Umar, General Manager, Corporate Communications, NIMC, said Aziz was a pioneer staff of NIMC and Director, Information Technology/National Identity Database Department of NIMC before he retired in 2014. He has more than 30 years’ of post-qualification experience in Engineering and Information Technology in both the private and public sectors.
He has B.Eng in Civil Engineering and M.Sc in Structural Engineering with Specialty in Computer Aided Design from Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria.
Before he joined NIMC at inception, Engr. Aziz was the Information Technology Adviser to the Minister, Federal Capital Territory Administration, where he pioneered the implementation of the first e-government solution that won a Microsoft award in 2006. He served as the Sub-committee (Technical) Chairman on the Presidential Committee on Harmonisation of ICT which resulted in the formation of Galaxy Backbone.
The new DG was also a deputy director, Information Technology at the Bureau of Public Enterprises and the Principal Consultant, Management Information System (MIS) Department, Afri-Projects Consortium.
He was director at the Secretariat of the Presidential Implementation Committee of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF) office saddled with the responsibilities for the Implementation of Government Decisions on Consumer Credit System, National Outsourcing Initiative and Harmonization of Identification Schemes in Nigeria. The committee oversaw setting up the National Identity Management Commission in 2007.
In his professional career, he designed and supervised several landmark structures in Kaduna and Abuja, including the National Universities Commission (NUC) Secretariat, Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) Headquarters, African Petroleum (AP) Plaza, Nigeria Agricultural and Cooperative Bank (NACB) office block and several others.
The new NIMC boss is a member of several professional bodies, including the Nigerian Society of Engineers (NSE), American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and the Nigerian Institution of Structural Engineers (NIStructE) where he is the current Vice President. He is also a member of the Computer Association of Nigeria (COAN) and the Internet Society (ISOC). He is widely travelled and an alumnus of Harvard, Stanford, IMD and Lagos Business School.
Umar said it is expected that his knowledge and vast experience will be brought to bear in actualizing the presidential mandate of harmonising the various databases domiciled in different government organisations and capture successfully all eligible Nigerians and legal residents into the database for national planning and efficiency.
-Leadership