The Senate and the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) have backed greater deployment of digital solutions to strengthen business trust, formalise Nigeria’s informal sector and create employment opportunities for the country’s teeming unemployed youth.

The stakeholders spoke in Abuja at the unveiling of Sky ID, a Nigerian telecommunications and business identity platform designed to provide business communication, identity and verification solutions.

Speaking at the event, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Housing and Urban Development, Senator Aminu Waziri Tambuwal, said the National Assembly would continue to support legislation that creates an enabling environment for technology-driven businesses and employment.

Tambuwal said lawmakers had a responsibility to make laws that would support initiatives capable of improving businesses and creating opportunities for Nigerians.

“First and foremost, our job is primarily to make laws for the good governance and order of the country.

“We shall continue to make such laws that will enable these types of initiatives and several others that have the capabilities and ability to support Nigerians in their businesses and create jobs for our young people,” he said.

Also speaking, an Assistant Director with the Digital Development Services Department of NITDA, Dr Ahmed Yusuf Tambuwal, said digital innovation could play a significant role in transforming Nigeria’s informal sector, where a large proportion of Nigerians operate.

He said digital tools could help small businesses formalise their operations, manage their businesses more efficiently and expand their customer base, thereby enabling them to pursue larger business opportunities.

“I think this particular initiative is very important for the informal sector. As you are well aware, the informal sector is where the largest population of Nigerians operate.

“With this innovation, a lot of small businesses are going to be formalised. They will be able to manage their businesses better, expand their customer base and, while remaining small businesses, gain the capacity to manage bigger business opportunities,” he said.

Tambuwal said initiatives such as Sky ID could contribute significantly to job creation and economic growth, while noting that NITDA was supporting stakeholders in the digital economy through policies, regulations and frameworks.

“We have a number of policies and regulations aimed at simplifying how businesses and individuals can participate in the digital economy. Through our policies, regulations and frameworks, we are able to support this type of business.

“We actively support good initiatives such as this through partnerships, funding and many other methods,” he said.

Earlier, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of IT Sky Solutions, Almustapha Liman, said the idea behind Sky ID was driven by the need to strengthen trust and accountability in business interactions in Nigeria.

Liman said businesses and individuals needed reliable systems through which their identities could be established and verified, particularly as digital communication and transactions increasingly become part of everyday commercial activities.

He argued that the challenge was not necessarily the character of Nigerians but the absence of systems capable of encouraging accountability and discouraging abuse.

“In any society in the world, you will find the good, the bad and the ugly. But if a system is put in place that can check the activities of individuals, it can discourage people from doing what is not right,” he said.

According to him, the identity and verification component of the platform could help build greater confidence between businesses and their customers while contributing to efforts to address trust and security challenges confronting commercial interactions.

Liman also said the private sector had a responsibility to contribute to the development of systems that promote trust, stressing that technology should not only facilitate communication but also strengthen relationships between businesses and their customers.

Linking the initiative to employment generation, he said the company had created jobs through its operations and network of channel partners.

He disclosed that about 1,000 people had been employed through the company’s operations in India, while some members of its channel-partner network had between 400 and 500 workers, potentially translating into several thousand additional jobs.

Liman said the company’s longer-term ambition was to extend the trust and verification model beyond Nigeria by developing what he described as a “social trust network across Africa.”

He said the network could enable Africans and African businesses to communicate and transact with greater confidence across national borders.

“We are building a social trust network across Africa, whereby someone from another nation should be able to communicate or transact with another party anywhere globally,” he said.

The Sky ID platform was unveiled as a business communication and identity solution designed to enable companies to manage incoming customer calls through a single business number, alongside identity and business verification features.