We learn that it is IDEMIA which seeks, without going through the normal established procedures, to monopolize the market for the manufacture of the national biometric identity card in Niger. According to credible sources, there is some agitation to award the market for the production of the biometric national identity card to one of these French companies through the BOT.
For a few days, we can read on social networks, Nigeriens have been wondering about the fact that their country, for more than sixty years, has always kept the same national identity card as if Niger should be this society which refuses to evolve. This is all the more true since the national identity card of Niger, those who travel know it well, is not respected by other neighbors who consider it as an object of prehistory, or in any case, to say true, from the colonial era. They are not wrong. How to understand that in this digital age, Nigeriens have remained to have this old-fashioned paper which serves as their national identity card?
This timely debate, it goes without saying, is undoubtedly provoked to justify requiring the services of foreign companies to, supposedly, correct such an anomaly that Nigeriens will only be able to appreciate, especially when, in their hands, this new aesthetic and modern menu that will give them the feeling of living in their time and in modernity. However, those who want to use it to solve the problem have more reasons than the objective considerations raised above. Indeed, we learn that it is IDEMIA which seeks, without going through the normal established procedures, to monopolize the market for the manufacture of the national biometric identity card in Niger. According to credible sources, there is some agitation to award the market for the production of the biometric national identity card to one of these French companies through the BOT.
So what is the BOT?
Build-Operate-Transfer, is a contractual model in which a public organization (e.g. government) partners with a private company to finance, design, build and operate a project for a defined period after the project has been transferred to the ‘public entity’. It is a foreign adviser to the Presidency of the Republic who would be maneuvering to snatch the market for the benefit of Idemia or, failing that, the Imprimerie Nationale de France.
Except that, in the first case as in the second, it is about two companies which do not have good press because all taken, the corrupt hand in the bag through many businesses in particular in Romania, in Senegal, in Nepal, Mali, etc.
It is therefore understandable that Niger takes great risks in going to these companies because to do so is to allow, specialists can alert, these companies to have in their possession valuable information on Nigeriens, information that they could ” sell” to terrorist and criminal organizations. And with the anti-French feeling growing in the Sahel, Nigerien youth risk boycotting the process. The concerns are as serious as there is reason to be wary of them, especially since French companies are not the only ones and the best in the field of the production of biometric cards or passports.
Our alerts are well-founded and we have investigated the two companies so that the Nigerien authorities are wary of them in order to make other more substantial choices in view of the very sensitive nature of the product. On several sites that we were going to mention, it is possible to learn about these two companies and their image to understand that they are not necessarily frequentable, in any case not the most suitable for such a contract and especially when we learn that it is this adviser who uses his proximity to the Presidency of Niger to favor the French companies mentioned.
But first, who is EDEMIA?
From a headline published on the Africanews site, we learn that the Idemia group (formerly Oberthur) is “Investigated for corruption. On a last update of 04/14/2017, we learn that an ally of Kabila even received a payment of $700,000 linked to the 2015 biometric passport agreement. The World Bank Announces website, through “Settlement with Oberthur Technologies”, “IDEMIA, one of our competitors was called Oberthur technologies, we learn more about IDEMIA. Indeed, they have changed their name to IDEMIA since the World Bank’s decision to exclude them from African markets”. It is therefore understandable that this company is formally advised against by the World Bank to African States.
On another site, we learn that the CJIP, Judicial Convention of Public Interest, between IDEMIA France and the PNF [sont visés par une enquête] for acts of corruption committed in Bangladesh. It was between 2014 and 2016. We can read on this site all the corruption device that has been put in place. Another site provides information on the French company, corroborating these serious accusations against it. This is the site of the Maritime Confederation. It discusses the involvement of the Le Drians in corruption cases in Mali through an article entitled: “Le Drian family: corruption as a way of life!” “. It also reads that “Thomas Le Drian, the son of dad Jean Yves, both are summoned before the court of Mali”. The investigation which makes the case is published on June 25, 2021. We learn that “After dubious lobbying, pressure and various complicities too long to mention here, the company IDEMIA close to Thomas Le Drian, with the help [de] dad Jean Yves, obtains the Malian market against a Canadian company [pourtant] more economical”, and perhaps more professional. We can therefore fear the same favoritism by which – it is well known to Africans, and in particular Nigerians to whom Le Drian came even before the last elections of 2021 were held to say that they are the best we have has ever had on earth – elsewhere society has laid down its tentacles and played at corruption. This flattery for an electoral process that is not worth it, could well hide this project which aims to monopolize markets in the country. How not to believe it when we learn on the site of the Maritime Confederation that “Thus the State of Mali is defrauded and Thomas pocketed large commissions. Corruption, [apprend-on] is confirmed! This is how the shipwreck of France began in Africa, sent from all over the continent”. We therefore cannot believe in this narrative of France, which makes itself healthy in its relationship with Africa, leading to the belief that it only came to Africa for the good of Africans, even though the latter, for well-founded reasons , have been complaining about it for centuries and this continued with independence and continued with democracy. We can clearly see that, using family ties, France can continue to exploit Africa, with in the Malian case a minister of France who is capable of playing the great corrupter on the continent to create spaces of predation for his offspring. . It should therefore come as no surprise that a few years later, the same France returns to smear the families it has used on the continent as in Gabon with the Bongos, and speak to harm them of “ill-gotten gains”.
Yahoo! finance in Challenge, through this article, “The Idemia group (formerly Oberthur) [pour sa part annonce que la société est] under investigation for corruption”. IDEMIA is therefore not to be recommended and Nigeriens have good reason to be wary of it. The same is true for the other French company.
The Imprimerie Nationale de France is just as suspicious…
The Imprimerie Nationale de France itself is not spared such compromising accusations because it develops the same corrupt practices that are decried at IDEMIA, which had this fashion strategy in France, to get rid of its first name, Oberthur in this case, and get dressed in a new name with which it believes it can get a facelift, make itself invisible for its faults and get rid of its heavy liabilities which cannot give it good publicity. Isn’t it Cogéra, alias Areva, alias Orano…?
On the Figaro website, the article “The prestigious national printing works in the sights of the French Anticorruption Agency”, written by Etienne Jacob and updated on 02/18/2022 at 5:09 p.m., teaches us that, despite the seriousness of the charges against her, “no official communication has yet been made from IN Group and the AFA regarding this inspection”. On another site, we read: “The national printing office at the heart of an investigation for corruption”, published on 09/01/2009 at 7:58 p.m. and modified on 09/01/2009 at 10:29 p.m. Like IDEMIA, the Imprimerie Nationale de France is not a good address for obtaining biometric cards or passports. How not to believe it when the site informs us that “the national printing office, responsible for producing official documents (identity cards, passports, etc.), is the subject of a judicial investigation for “corruption of an agent public” in the award of several contracts abroad”.
The compromising information is confirmed on another site, that of Africa Intelligence in this case. He tells us in “Corruption at the French printing office: Senegal is one of the countries mentioned in a vast enterprise of corruption at the French national printing office (edition of 10/09/2009”. Niger, unless you want to further discredit itself, cannot therefore approach such companies to trade with them. [que] the Senegalese intermediaries touched 20 percent” of the market, which, one can realize, is colossal as a bribe.
Another site, in an article, “Biometric passports: French justice suspects the national printing press of having obtained contracts in Romania, Georgia, Syria and Senegal against payment of bribes”, confirming the same incriminating charges. Another site even speaks of “Laundering & Corruption” by “Suspicions of corruption [qui] taint an IN Group contract in Nepal”. As you can see, wherever these companies go, it is to use corruption to put markets in their hands. In Niger, there are some agitations, to attribute the market of manufacture of biometric national identity card to one of these companies through the BOT. Whether it is Idemia or the Imprimerie Nationale de France, corruption remains, wherever they have gone, their label. In Niger, Bazoum must be all the more careful that things are brewing under his shadow.
To be continued !
Ali Soumana
