Nigeria’s government says it is stepping up a nationwide drive to enrol every resident in its national digital identity system, through a strengthened partnership between the Federal Ministry of Information and National Orientation and the National Identity Management Commission.
The commitment was set out in Abuja as NIMC’s director-general, Abisoye Coker-Odusote, briefed the information minister, Mohammed Idris, on the newly enacted NIMC Act 2026. That law, which recasts the commission around digital trust, adds provisions on data protection, cybersecurity, digital public infrastructure, and public key infrastructure, and positions NIMC as the country’s foundational digital identity authority and the only body authorised for digital identity management in Nigeria. The National Identification Number, or NIN, is the unique number the system issues to each enrolled person. The government casts near-universal coverage as a foundation for governance, planning, and financial inclusion, since access to services from banking to subsidies increasingly depends on a verified identity.
The commission says it has enrolled more than 136 million Nigerians and legal residents into the National Identity Database, with an estimated 100 million still to be captured. To close that gap, NIMC has begun a ward-by-ward enrolment campaign across the country’s 8,809 political wards, aimed at reaching women, children, people with disabilities, rural dwellers, refugees, legal residents, and Nigerians abroad. The World Bank has backed the effort, having expanded Nigeria’s digital ID target to 180 million people.
Idris said the ministry’s communication platforms, including the News Agency of Nigeria, would support public sensitisation, and urged NIMC to deepen its work with the National Orientation Agency, which has a presence in all 774 local government areas, to reach rural communities. Officials said NIMC has integrated with more than 250 ministries, departments, and agencies, and that the database has recorded no reported breach.
Idris called a strong and inclusive national identity system indispensable to effective governance, national planning, financial inclusion, and digital transformation. “If you don’t know the number of people that you have and the demography and what they represent, how do you plan for them?” he said. Coker-Odusote said the commission had begun the ward enrolment exercise on the president’s directive so that people in rural and community areas would not be excluded from government programmes.
Sources: Federal Ministry of Information and National Orientation
–
By the ID Tech Editorial Team
