The National Identity Management Commission’s industry data from 2022 has shown that 241,110 Nigerians received National Identification Numbers.
This increased the total number of Nigerians living abroad who were members of NIN to 319,260 as of the end of 2022. As of January 22, 2023, that figure had increased to 335,353.
The list of nations where registered Nigerians live was not broken down by the NIMC. To add Nigerians who live abroad to the National Identity Database, the NIMC launched a diaspora enrollment exercise in 2019.
Although NIN registration is free within the borders of Nigeria, it is not.
A recent initiative by the federal government to enroll 100 million people over three years was made public.
The government stated that identity management has continued to be a tasking issue for several administrations in the National Development Plan 2021–2025.
As a result, as of the end of 2022, there were 319,260 Nigerians who were NIN members overall. When January 22nd, 2023 rolled around, that number had grown to 335,353.
The NIMC did not break down the list of countries where registered Nigerians reside. The NIMC established a diaspora program to add Nigerians who reside abroad to the National Identity Database.
“There is paucity of data despite several agencies collecting identity data for their operations in Nigeria. The latest of these is the Nigerian Communications Commission linking SIM Registration Data to the National Identity Number Database. NIMC plans to register an additional 100 million people in three years and has embarked on a massive registration drive. The plan is to enroll 2.5 million people monthly for the next three years.”
In contrast, 21.33 million people signed up for NIN in 2022. This is because there were 94.03 million NIN-positive people worldwide as of December 31, 2022, up from 72.7 million on January 1, 2022.
In addition, the database had 1.04 million new registrations as of January 22, 2023, bringing the total to 95.07 million.
Regarding the data for January 2023, NIMC stated, “NIMC’s enrolment figures as of January 22, 2023, currently stand at over 95.07 million unique records.”
53.68 million men and 41.40 million women currently hold NINs, according to the report. Lagos (10.52 million NIN holders), Kano (8.32 million), Kaduna (5.61 million), Ogun (3.97 million), and Oyo are the top five states with the most NIN holders (3.75 million).
Bayelsa (602 705), Ebonyi (762 993), Ekiti (982 264), Cross-River (1.09 million), and Taraba are the top five states with the fewest NIN holders (1.40 million).
According to NIMC, NIN would eventually serve as the focal point for all personal information, including fingerprints, head-to-shoulder photos, other biometric data, and digital signatures, in the National Identity Database, making it simple to confirm and verify someone’s identity when they travel or conduct business.
Everyone in Nigeria is required to obtain a NIN. Calls from the telephone lines could no longer be placed by Nigerians without NINs from 2022.
A plan to enroll 100 million people in three years was recently made public by the federal government. Identity management has remained a challenging issue for numerous governments, according to the government’s National Development Plan 2021–2025.
A cooperation between Nigeria and the World Bank known as the “Digital Identification for Development Project for Nigeria” aims to raise the proportion of citizens in the nation who have a national ID number.
According to Solomon Odole, the project’s coordinator, the NIMC’s insufficient infrastructure would be addressed. Nigeria Digital Identification for Development
He said, “The project has made adequate provisions for financing institutional capacity development, aimed at building trust and credibility within the country’s ID ecosystem.
“Since it became effective in December 2021, Nigeria ID4D had sought to address the pervasive fragmentation of the Nigerian identification ecosystem, with no fewer than 13 public institutions providing some form of identification services; inadequate infrastructure of the National Identity Management Commission that poses a risk to the continuous enrolment of people, notably women, youth and persons living with disability.”
Many problems plagued the NIN enrollment procedure in 2022, including a protracted server outage that had a negative impact on many Nigerians.
Additionally, during an interview on the Frontiers Show on the Nigerian Television Authority earlier this year, the Director-General of the National Infrastructure Management Commission, Aliyu Aziz, disclosed that the commission’s current infrastructure could only support 100 million Nigerians.
He stated that in May 2022, when there were around 80 million people living with NIN.
In his words; “We built it (the database) to cater for 100 million. Right now, we are at 80 million. Also, we have the government’s approval to upgrade it. So, before we reach there, we must have upgraded to about 250 million.”
He added, “We are trying to upgrade the system. We have got the government’s approval since July last year. We are following up to get the funding. Funding is a challenge, but I don’t want to call it a challenge because it is a challenge for everyone.”
