Huduma Namba, The Grand Scandal That Kenyans Never Knew

The Government spent 6 billion on a system to capture and store data collected from millions of Kenyans. The system was known as Huduma Namba.

President Uhuru Kenyatta in April 2019 launched the program in Machakos. It was meant to capture among other things biometrics, identification documents – passport number, Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) pin number, national ID, NHIF and NSSF and personal emails among others.

The data was supposed to be used in national planning, social services, project resource allocation, and even project infrastructure.

Kenyans are required to carry several documents like the national identity card, KRA personal identification number, driving license, passport, and many others.

All these documents are recorded in different databases so Huduma was to consolidate the information to arrive at the ‘single source of truth’ regarding a Kenyan.

During the months leading up to the Huduma Namba registration exercise early this year, State officials led by Cabinet secretaries Joe Mucheru and Fred Matiang’i was vocal on the importance of the exercise.

Over 36 million Kenyans have registered for Huduma Namba.

However, there was a case challenging the constitutionality of the National Integrated Identity Management System (NIIMS) indicating the Government already had the data it sought to collect.

Anand Venkatanatayanan, an expert witness told the standard that the centralization of Kenyans’ personal data was instead a threat, inviting cybercriminals and hackers to attempt to access valuable datasets on citizens.

“It is axiomatic in computer security that nothing is truly secure and there are only costs and benefits of hoarding data,” he claimed. “Centralized databases such as Aadhaar and NIIMS, however, hoard so much data that the cost-benefit ratio tilts definitely in favor of attackers.”

Venkatanatayanan gave the example of a similar project in India where the collected data was corrupted, sometimes returning different profiles of people on one number and also led to leakages when disgruntled state officers sold off the data to brokers.

So is the information of over 30 million Kenyans who registered safe? Has the government taken any steps towards securing the personal information of Kenyans?

READ: BBI Report Wants Governor Position In Nairobi Abolished

Months later people do not have Huduma Namba leaving Kenyans wondering was it just another corruption scandal.

The number was supposed to be issued to applicants immediately they registered but things made a drastic U-turn and people were issued with registration acknowledgment slips.

In November 2019, The National Treasury asked parliament to approve Sh1 billion more for the successful completion of the Huduma Namba registration process.

The project has already gobbled up Sh7.7 billion and it is still not complete, Can the funds already used be accounted for?

Why could the government not use the information they had to come up with a consolidated system?

I think it is all a big scam by our corrupt government for a few politicians to enrich themselves.

What do you think?

By Kathleen Francisca