Should Purchasing NIMC’s Storage Servers Cost N25 Billion?

The National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) has revealed its storage servers cannot adequately store data for the country’s population.

While appearing before the Senate Public Accounts Committee, the Director-General of NIMC, Aliyu Abubakar Aziz, disclosed that 57 million persons had been registered, but the commission would need additional 90 servers to register 100 million Nigerians. 

 “For us to reach 100 million, we will need 90 servers. We have enrolled 57 million as of today. We will ask for N25 billion at FEC tomorrow to buy more server to take the whole of the population,” he said.

Abubakar Aziz proposed a total of N25 billion to procure the needed storage servers for the storage of NIN enrolment data.

Meanwhile, NIMC is being probed by the Senate Public Accounts Committee over the procurement of 22 units of servers for N229.7 million, with no evidence of Ministerial Tender’s Board approval. The board is also probing the commission for not complying with the Public Procurement Act when it awarded the contract.

Can Servers Be Procured For Less?

If the commission requires N25 billion to purchase 90 storage servers, this means that one server would be purchased at nearly N300 million. Note that 3 Par storage servers with a maximum raw capacity of 750 to 3000 terabytes cost less than N300 million.

Does storing data have to cost this much?

It is not public knowledge the type of servers the commission uses to store its data, but what is common knowledge is the struggling state of the country’s economy.

If the country is to survive these trying times, commissions like NIMC would want to consider cost-effective methods of storing the country’s data. A perfect option is choosing the cloud solution.

Auto-scaling clouds infrastructure is a cost-effective and efficient option for the storage of large data in the new world. The cloud storage company provides maintenance and security for all hardware, software, and other supporting infrastructure in its data centres for a stipulated monthly subscription fee. 

Oftentimes, the overall cloud can cost less than the amount of money needed for On-premises storage/server use, cooling, floor space, electricity costs, etc.

 A 2020 survey found that 41% of enterprise workloads will be run on public cloud platforms by the end of the year, with another 22% using a hybrid option, which is a mix of both. The study also predicted On-premises workloads will shrink a full 10% before the year’s out—from 37% to 27%.

Another advantage of cloud storage is security. On-premise servers give their users the false idea that their data is safer because of the absence of third-party providers. On-premise servers require that the organization provides its own security.

Can NIMC boast of a high level of security expertise to guarantee the safety of the country’s data on their servers or does the country need to pay extra for this expertise? Cloud offers multi-layered comprehensive security from a team of global cybersecurity experts to safeguard data at all times. 

Gartner estimates that public cloud service workloads will suffer at least 60% fewer security incidents than those in traditional data centers. 

Here are a few comprehensive, multi-layered security services that top cloud providers offer: Access control systems, Continual threat monitoring, Encryption for data in transit and at rest, Physical data centre security, Network protection, Continuous validation, Mass file deletion protection and Suspicious login and activity monitoring.

Also, considering the electricity situation in the country, coupled with the below-par technical know-how, high maintenance on-premise servers should never be an option, except we are to consider the advantage it allows those in charge to conveniently siphon funds.

Patsy Nwogu

Reporting on data-driven featured stories and investigations.

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