Huduma Namba battle goes to Court of Appeal

A National Integrated Identity Management System (Niims) registration kit. [File, Standard]

The Sh6 billion Huduma Namba project battle has gone to the Court of Appeal.

The Nubian Community has filed an appeal seeking to block implementation of the National Integrated Identity Management System (Niims), arguing that it is based on a flawed design and poses a risk to the right to privacy.

Yussuf Bashir, the lobby's lawyer, faulted the High Court for allowing conditional implementation of Huduma Namba, saying the Government is not interested in honouring the orders as it had already announced that it would roll out the rest of the project.

“Because of failure by the High Court to expressly find the design of Niims was flawed and the entirety of the amendments to the Registration of Persons Act, which establishes Niims, were unconstitutional, there is an imminent risk that the rights of Kenyans and those of foreign nationals residing in Kenya will be irreparably violated,” argued Mr Bashir.

In the High Court, the lobby had called an expert witness, Anand Venkatanatayanan, who termed Kenya’s system archaic.

Mr Venkatanatayanan cited changes in human being, the system giving two different results to the same person and failure by a similar project, Aadhaar, in India and hoarding information in one place, as some of the reasons Kenyans would not benefit from the expensive project.