By Yakubu LAAH InvestAdvocate
Lagos (INVESTADVOCATE) – The Independent National Electoral Commission’s (INEC’s) Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs) will not be suitable as a means of valid identification in the Nigerian capital market as proposed by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
Bayo Olugbemi, president/chairman of Council, Institute of Capital Market Registrars (ICMR) said this in his office in an interview with InvestAdvocate on Monday.
According to him, there are some shortcomings in the production of the PVCs ranging from unclear photographs to people not using their real names and also mixing up surnames from first and other names.
“It will cause problems, we are not matured enough to use PVCs in this clime for identification purposes. We the Registrars are advising against it for now, because a lot of people wrongly did the PVCs and would want you to accept that as a means of valid identification if SEC goes ahead with the proposal,” the president of ICMR said.
Olugbemi affirmed the ICMR will in their submissions to SEC on the proposed new rules/amendments to include the INEC voter’s registration card as a valid means of identification of individual clients in the capital market expose these shortcomings.
“I think it’s not wise, the reason is that in our own response we will tell them the shortcomings of most PVCs, one is that most PVCs are not properly captured, the pictures are not clear enough, they didn’t do a professional work on the PVCs, when you put down say about 20 PVCs, you can hardly see about three that the faces appeared to be clear,” he affirmed.
ICMR president advised that Bank Verification Numbers (BVN) should be used instead of the PVCs. The BVN is part of the Central Bank of Nigeria’s (CBN’s), cashless policy to capture customers’ data and check fraud in the banking system.
It is an initiative of the CBN to give every customer in the Nigerian banking system a unique identification number that can be verified across all banks in Nigeria.
“Therefore, people have to be very careful; I think we should be looking at the Bank Verification Numbers (BVN). I was at a polling station in my ward when somebody wanted to collect his PVC, he cannot even tell the agents his really names, he said when they were insisting it must be three names, he wrote one name that was not actually his, a kind of nickname, many people did that or in some of the PVCs, your surname has been taken as your first name and vice versa,” Olugbemi added.
The Nigeria’s securities regulator on January 29 proposed the inclusion of INEC’s PVCs as a valid means of identification of individual clients in the capital market.
SEC says it’s pursuant to S 44 (4) of its (Anti-Money laundering and combating the financing of terrorism) Regulations, 2013 listing suitable documentary evidence as means of identification. “It is suggested that this sub-regulation be amended to include the INEC Voter’s Registration card,” the Commission added.
