Mr Chris Onyemenam, the Director-General, National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), said in Abuja on Sunday that the new identity authentication and verification exercise would curtail fraud, especially in the banking sector.

Onyemenam made the statement when he featured at the forum of the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN).

He said the system would also address challenges of identifying genuine social welfare needs.

" We would have instituted the various service schemes in particular, identity authentication and verification which, in our opinion as far as the banking sector is concerned, would help to mitigate the incidence of fraud and bring it down to as low as 10 per cent, if not completely eliminating it.

" And of course, we can then say to ourselves we can help NAPEP, we can help various other social welfare programmes because we have the data base.

"And on the basis of the data base, it can then become possible to make deliberate policy plans and implement them along those lines, because it is easier for you to say I want to deal with this category of citizens, and you will have the basis to deal with them."