Nigeria has requested another 12-month extension of its $430 million Digital Identification for Development project, moving the closing date to December 31, 2027, according to a World Bank restructuring paper dated October 22. The paper says enrollment partners have not been paid since January and that about $196 million of the financing, or 45.6 percent, remains undisbursed.
It would be the third extension since the project was approved in February 2020, bringing the total to 42 months. The project was first due to close in June 2024, then received a six-month extension and a two-year extension that came with a higher target of 180 million National Identification Numbers (NINs). Financing comes from the World Bank’s International Development Association, the French Development Agency and the European Investment Bank. “If the project is not extended by WBG, all other co-financiers will also close,” the bank said.
The National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) has licensed about 365 Front-End Partners, including mobile network operators, to enroll people. “The billing system must generate audited FEP payment reports to enable timely NIN payments to FEPs, which have not been paid since January 2026,” the paper says. NIMC said in December 2024 that it had settled arrears owed to those partners for enrollments carried out between 2021 and 2024.
About 121 million people had obtained NINs by September 30, leaving a gap of 59 million against the target. More than 140 million enrollments had been recorded by September 14, but only 121 million had cleared biometric and demographic validation and duplicate checks. NIMC would have to raise average monthly enrollment from 1.5 million to 3.9 million. As of June, 40.4 million women and girls held NINs against a target of 79 million, as did 26.3 million children under 16 against a target of 60.83 million.
The extension also reflects delays in the National Identity Management System 2.0, an open-source platform meant to replace fragmented proprietary systems. Its contract was signed on September 15 after a prolonged procurement, and work that would ordinarily take about 18 months has been compressed into 15, with full deployment and data migration scheduled for December 15, 2027. Digital authentication targets remain unmet because NINAuth, launched in May 2025, still awaits integration with the new platform.
To close the enrollment gap, the paper calls for deploying 7,000 procured mobile enrollment devices by January 2027, launching a learning system to train and certify agents, and starting school-based enrollment by December 2026. A ward-level campaign that began in March has generated 10 million NINs.
Sources: BusinessDay, Nairametrics
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By the ID Tech Editorial Team
