By Prince Osuagwu
The contract dispute between National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), and a private company, Truid Limited, may have been transferred from the House of Representatives Committee on public petitions to an Alternative Dispute Resolution body which is yet to open the case.
This is after the threat by the House of Representatives to order the arrest of the Director-General of NIMC, Mrs. Bisoye Coker-Odusote for failure to appear before it, went viral, upsetting the ICT industry.
The committee frowned that Odusote failed to appear before it despite several invitations to answer charges on refusal to pay for a state-of-the-art software development project executed by Truid Limited, for NIMC.
The committee had last month, issued a stern warning to order the Inspector-General of Police, to arrest the NIMC DG, if she refused to appear before the committee at its next hearing, which was fixed for March 13, 2025.
However, over two weeks after the committee’s sitting on March 13, 2025; there were no indications that the NIMC DG honoured the committee’s invitation and the committee also failed to either arrest or order for her arrest.
The inaction led to many stakeholders raising questions over the seriousness of the committee to execute its threats.
However, when contacted, a top member of the committee said the matter has been stepped down.
According to the source: “For now, that matter has been stepped down.We are now taking that case on an Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) route. That’s where the matter is now; and so the Committee is silent until they give us a report. That is when we will know what next to do,” he added.
Reliable sources at NIMC also confirmed that the matter is now sitting with the ADR and refrained to make more comment until a report of resolution is out. “ there is actually no case that warrants the kind of public show some individuals are staging over this dispute. But I may not tell you much now rather than that the case has been transferred to an alternative dispute resolution method. When we meet and resolve the issue we will come up with a comprehensive statement” the source at NIMC told Hi-Tech.
Hi-Tech gathered that the petition was over an alleged breach of business agreement on software solution, tokenization system which a private company, Truid Limited claimed it successfully installed and deployed at the commission
According to counsel to Truid Limited, E. R. Opara, the agreement was premised on an arrangement that the project would be funded, developed and deployed without any financial obligation from NIMC.
However, Truid Ltd 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 10 years, from 2021 when the software was deployed.
Opara said the agreement was honoured adequately until the appointment of the new Mrs. Coker-Odusote, who allegedly refused to honour the agreement.
The post NIMC, Truid Limited trade dispute heads to alternative dispute resolution appeared first on Vanguard News.
