As President William Ruto gears to roll out the much-touted Digital Identification Card (Digital ID), outspoken lawyer Miguna Miguna has made it clear that he does not support the project.
In a lengthy statement on Wednesday, Miguna gave five reasons detailing why the ID, estimated to gobble up to Ksh1 billion, should not be prioritised by the current regime.
With a direct block-lettered subject line, 'I oppose the imposition of the National Digital ID in Kenya', the lawyer argued that the country, which falls in the third-world category, should expend its resources to dealing with other pressing matters such as high unemployment, universal healthcare, and homelessness.
"Kenya lacks the legal, technological and human capacity to protect privacy and prevent misuse of personal digital data. Kenya wasn’t even able to detect and prevent WorldCoin from illegally harvesting personal data from its citizens for more than one year," argued Miguna.
"Kenya lacks the digital infrastructure to prevent cyber attacks, including hacking, hence making the harvesting, processing and storage of digital identity prone to abuse and illegal poaching."
The lawyer further read malice in the intended rollout arguing that the state had failed to incorporate public participation and likened it to other failed projects like the Building Bridges Initiative and the Huduma Namba.
Miguna argued that developed countries like the United States and Canada were yet to introduce compulsory digital identification because their citizens are opposed to it.
"The Kenya Kwanza must refrain from forcing Kenyans to pay for another expensive white elephant with dubious origins," he told his 2.4 million followers.
"Kenyans deserve to have clean running water, electricity, food and healthcare per household before anyone lectures us about digital identification."
On Tuesday, Citizen Services Principal Secretary Julius Bitok confirmed that the Head of State will roll out the Unique Personal Identifier (UPI) on September 29.
He noted that the National Steering Committee for Digital Identity approved the proposals made by the National Digital Identity Technical Committee.
The digital IDs will encompass four components Maisha Card, Maisha Namba, Digital Signature and Master National Population Register.
In comparison, former President Uhuru Kenyatta's attempt to digitising the national ID via a new chip-infused version, Huduma Namba, set back the state Ksh10 billion. The card, which fell flat, collected personal data of 38 million which is sitting on a database somewhere.
