By The House of Representatives Committee on Public Petitions has threatened to order the arrest of the Director General and Chief Executive Officer of Nigerian Identity Management Commission (NIMC),Engr. Abisoye Coker-Odusote, if she fails to come in person to answer charges on refusal to pay for state-of-the-art software development project installed and deployed to the commission by a private firm, Truid Limited.
The order came following a petition from Truid Limited to the 10th Assembly, which alleged a breach of licence agreement by NIMC.
According to E. R. Opara, counsel to Truid Limited, the agreement is premised on an arrangement whereby the Truid Limited funded, developed and deployed tokenization system without any financial obligation from NIMC.
Truid was to get returns on her investment through patronage of service providers and the proceeds shared on an agreed ratio. This was to run for an initial period of ten years from 2021 when the software was deployed.
According to the petition, things were going on smoothly until the appointment of the new DG of NIMC who has been trying to truncate the agreement.
Reacting to the submissions of the counsels of both the petitioners and the respondents, Chairman of the Committee, Mike Etaba frowned on the continuous absence of the NIMC Director General despite several invitations.
“If she fails to show up at the next hearing of this case, we’ll have no option than to ask the Inspector General of police to bring her. How can an official of government treat constituted authority with such levity? We can no longer condone such attitude”.
