President Bola Tinubu has directed the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) to ensure that every Nigerian is enrolled in the national identity database before the end of 2026 as part of efforts to strengthen governance, planning and public service delivery.
The Director-General and Chief Executive Officer of NIMC, Abisoye Coker-Odusote, disclosed the directive during an interview on Channels Television’s Sunday Politics, saying the commission has been mandated to take the enrolment exercise to communities across the country.
“The President has given us till the end of this year to make sure that we capture every single Nigerian,” she said.
Coker-Odusote explained that the commission is working with partners under the World Bank-supported Identification for Development (ID4D) project to accelerate nationwide registration.
According to her, NIMC has engaged accredited front-end partners within the digital identity ecosystem to support the enrolment process.
“What we have done is we have partnered through the World Bank ID4D project with front-end partners. They are part of the digital identity ecosystem. These are private citizens that we’ve enabled and given jobs to enrol citizens on our behalf,” she said.
She noted that the National Identification Number (NIN) serves as a unique identifier for every citizen and legal resident, ensuring that individuals are enrolled only once.
“That’s why it’s called a unique identifier, so that you’re only enrolled once,” she added.
The NIMC boss said the ongoing exercise would also provide the country with a more accurate population database, noting that estimates of Nigeria’s population currently range between 200 million and 250 million people.
“It is estimated that we’re 200 million. When we’re done enrolling, we will then know the actual numbers that we have. Some estimates say 230 million, while a few people say 250 million.
“Your identity is basically the foundation for effective governance and service delivery. How can you plan if you don’t know the total number of persons that you have? We have been mandated by Mr President to go down to the community levels to enrol every single Nigerian,” she said.
Responding to concerns about multiple registrations, Coker-Odusote said NIMC’s biometric verification system prevents individuals from obtaining more than one identity.
She explained that under the previous system, duplicate registrations could only be detected after records had been submitted to the database. However, the upgraded system now identifies duplicate enrolments through biometric verification and automatically invalidates them.
“The legacy system had no way of verifying at the front end whether you had already been captured. Once the record comes into the system, it flags it as a duplicate or that the person already exists in the database.
“You would only have one identity generated for you. The other record goes into a deduplication bucket where it is invalidated,” she said.
According to her, biometric verification using fingerprints and facial recognition has made it virtually impossible for an individual to maintain multiple identities.
“Absolutely. One of the things that this Act has done is to cement our role in capturing biometrics. Private and public sector organisations will no longer capture biometrics independently. They will validate identities through API integration with NIMC.
“The telcos are already doing that with us. If you need a SIM card, they capture your facial biometrics, which are matched against our database in real time to confirm that you are who you claim to be. We’re using biometric validation to tighten security around identity confirmation,” she said.
The directive comes weeks after President Tinubu signed the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) Act 2026 into law, repealing the 2007 legislation and strengthening Nigeria’s national identity framework.
The new law reinforces the Federal Government’s “One Person, One Identity” policy by making the National Identification Number the country’s foundational identity credential for accessing government services and essential private sector services, including banking, passport applications, tax administration, pensions, land transactions and consumer credit. The legislation is expected to enhance identity management, improve public service delivery, strengthen national security and support more effective socio-economic planning.
