President Bola Tinubu has directed the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) to ensure that every Nigerian is enrolled in the National Identity Number (NIN) database before the end of 2026 as part of efforts to strengthen the country’s identity management system.
The Director-General and Chief Executive Officer of NIMC, Abisoye Coker-Odusote, disclosed the presidential directive during an appearance on Channels Television’s Sunday Politics programme.
She said the nationwide enrolment drive is designed to establish a reliable national identity database that will improve governance, planning and the delivery of public services.
According to Coker-Odusote, the commission is working with private enrolment partners through the World Bank-supported Identification for Development (ID4D) initiative to expand registration across the country, particularly at the community level.
She explained that the National Identification Number is designed as a unique identity for every Nigerian, ensuring that individuals are registered only once through biometric verification.
The NIMC boss noted that completing the enrolment exercise would also provide the government with a more accurate picture of Nigeria’s population, saying existing population estimates vary widely.
She stressed that a dependable identity database is essential for national planning, resource allocation and effective service delivery, adding that the commission has been instructed to reach every eligible Nigerian before the deadline.
Addressing concerns over duplicate registrations, Coker-Odusote said the commission has upgraded its identity verification process to detect and prevent multiple enrolments through fingerprint and facial biometric authentication.
She explained that unlike the previous system, which identified duplicate records only after submission, the current platform verifies applicants during registration, ensuring that only one valid identity is assigned to each individual.
According to her, government agencies and private organisations requiring biometric verification will increasingly rely on NIMC’s central database through secure application programming interface (API) integration instead of maintaining separate biometric databases.
She cited telecommunications operators as an example, noting that facial biometrics captured during SIM registration are verified in real time against the NIMC database.
The renewed enrolment campaign follows President Tinubu’s assent to the National Identity Management Commission Act, 2026, which strengthens the country’s “One Person, One Identity” policy and establishes the National Identification Number as the primary identity credential for accessing key government and private sector services.
