Abuja — As part of the National Identity Management Commission's (NIMC) scheme on infrastructure deployment, Galaxy Backbone Plc has commenced the testing of the connectivity infrastructure which is to be rolled out for the Commission.

In December 2008, the Federal Government approved the award of N0.689 billion contract to Galaxy Backbone for the Metropolitan Fibre Optic network in Abuja, V-sat connectivity for the National Identity Management Commission offices in the 36 State including Abuja offices, construction of Disaster Recovery Site and provision of Business Connectivity Facilities.

But the implementation of the project was delayed by the sudden drastic drop in exchange rate dollar.

Managing Director/Chief Executive of Galaxy Backbone Plc, Mr. Gerald Ilukwe, who said that most aspects of the project were at advanced stages of completion noting that only the states connectivity project has been completed while testing has commenced in some states with respect to certain services which were part of the package.

Ilukwe said that when the registration centres were established in the States, these connectivity infrastructures would enable the electronic transmittal of Data from the registration centres to the National Identity Data Centre in Abuja , which he believed will reduce human interference with the processing that normally leads to errors and delays.

He said that, the Metropolitan Fibre Optic Network in Abuja which would provide access to the National Identity Database to Government Institutions including law agencies like the Police and the Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC) have been laid with interface connectivity and will soon be completed.

Director- General /Chief Executive of National Identity Management Commission, Br. Chris Onyemenam said Galaxy Backbone project was going on satisfactorily in-spite of the initial delays due to the foreign exchange rate issue.He reiterated that NIMC had covered much ground in the implementation of the National Identity Management Project except that these are not generally discernible to the ordinary citizen and understandably so too, as according to him, "these are the security-related and sensitive building blocks, which must be treated as such" he said

Galaxy would soon commence the testing of the Disaster Recovery Site facilities once SAGEM hands over the existing Identity Card Production Centre which the Government had since paid for, but which unfortunately has not been handed over to Nigeria by SAGEM".

He observed that this was most unfortunate and regrettable since SAGEM was supposed to have handed over since 2006 but did not.

Onyemenam lawyer confirmed that, the committee on Harmonization and integration had since commenced sitting with a view to facilitate the integration of database in Government institutions now that the infrastructure is almost in place.

He noted that with the submission of the report of the consultants on the harmonization assessment study, the harmonization policy was being articulated and would soon be subjected to stakeholders review before it is adopted for implementation subsequently.