AG Kihara Kariuki files notice of appeal against Huduma Card judgement that declared rollout illegal

NAIROBI,Kenya, Oct, 15 – The country’s Attorney General Kihara Kariuki was Friday at the corridors of justice where he filed a notice of appeal against Justice Jairus Ngaah’s judgement that declared the roll out of the Huduma Namba Card illegal.

Kihara said that he was ‘dissatisfied’ with the judgment and that the High Court decision was based on the wrong interpretation of the ‘essence’ and the practical intentions of Huduma Card.

Interior Cabinet Secretary Dr. Fred Matiang’i Friday said that the Huduma Card is essentially a collation of different identity documents already issued and certified by the government.

“The argument that the validation relevant data wasn’t factored is therefore spurious. Digitization of identification documents into a unitary/master ID system is a global trend and Kenya is no exception,” said Matiang’i.

He said that the Government was keen to digitize its services and the Huduma Card is intergral to the envisaged digitization agenda.

The High Court on Thursday declared the National Integrated Identity Management System programme dubbed as Huduma Namba invalid, on grounds of being in conflict with the Data Protection Act.

In his ruling, Justice Jairus Ngaah said the government erred by not conducting a data protection impact assessment before rolling out the cards.

“An order is hereby issued to bring into this honourable court to quash the government decision of November 18 2020 to roll out Huduma cards for being ultra vires of the data protection act 2019,” Justice Ngaa ruled.

He directed the government to first conduct the data protection impact assessment before the cards can be rolled out.

“Order of mandamus is hereby issued compelling the government to conduct a data protection impact assessment in accordance with section 31 of the Data Protection Act before processing of data and rolling out the Huduma cards,” he ruled.

Lobby group Katiba Institute had moved to court challenging the roll out of the cards, hailed by the government as a ‘single source of truth’.

The purpose of the initiative, the government argued was to create and manage a central master population database which will be the ‘single source of truth’ on a person’s identity.

The database contains information of all Kenyan citizens and foreign nationals residing in Kenya “and will serve as a reference point for ease of service delivery to the people of Kenya.”

In its argument, the lobby group argued that the Government failed to subject the fresh registration of Kenyans to data protection impact assessment (DPIA), a requirement under the law.

The multi-billion shillings exercise was launched by President Uhuru Kenyatta on April 2, 2019.

The exercise has been marred by controversy since then.

Already, the government has since started issuing out the Huduma Namba cards.

The current National Identification Cards were expected to stop being valid in December this year.