High Court declares Huduma Namba Cards illegal

High court today has ruled that the roll out of Huduma Namba cards is illegal. Katiba Insittute move to court in 2020 to challenge the roll out of Huduma namba cards by the state. It said that the state did not carry out assessment on the impact of data protection. The court has ruled out that the law was not followed in the roll out. Justice Jairus Ngaah made the ruling today on 14th October 2021 that the state did not carry out the data impact assessment before rolling out the cards which compromise the constitution during its process.

The ruled ““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,”. The assessment is suppose to identify the risks that could arise due to data loss, privacy breach and unlawful use of collected names, residences, postcode and date of birth. The Goervment started cards issuance in December 2020 and stated that the current National Identification Cards would be invalid in December 2021.

The court judge has ordered the Government to conduct impact assessment on the data protection before rolling out the cards. Judge Ngaah said “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,”. The President launched the Huduma Namba mass registration on April 2019.