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The Biometric Bank Verification Number (BVN) scheme in Nigeria, by the country’s banking and financial regulator, Central Bank of Nigeria, would give bank customers a single identifier across the country’s banking industry.

With the BVN, fragmented bank details of individuals will link up to a single identifier that calls up these details in one pool whenever that identifier (BVN) is queried.

Noble idea, and Nigerians only had to go into any commercial bank, and spend a couple minutes to get this done. But Nigerians weren’t really paying attention. Not until yesterday when the CBN announced it was ending the exercise and restricting some banking services on accounts that are yet to get with the programme.

Then this happened.

Thankfully, the exercise has been postponed till October 29, 2015.

We have an idea why Nigerians ignored all the bulk emails and SMSes from their banks begging them to sync their account details, but this tweetstorm from Nigeria’s popular ICT policy advocate, Gbenga Sesan shares a couple things that didn’t quite square up with the exercise.

And then on where we stand in a context without privacy laws?

Fonebase founder and CEO, Oo Nwoye has an interesting take on the exercise featuring a cheeky Tolu Ogunlesi reference. Check it out here.

Gbenga Onalaja Author

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