Tinubu Orders NIMC To Register Every Citizen, Gives Deadline

President Bola Tinubu has directed the Director-General and Chief Executive Officer of the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), Abisoye Coker-Odusote, to enrol every Nigerian in the commission’s database before the end of 2026.

Naija News reports that Coker-Odusote, during an interview on Channels Television’s Sunday Politics, said Tinubu’s directive is part of the Federal Government’s plan to build a comprehensive national identity system to support governance, planning and service delivery.

She said NIMC is working with partners under the World Bank-supported Identification for Development (ID4D) project to accelerate enrolment nationwide, stressing that the National Identification Number serves as a unique identifier.

According to Coker-Odusote, the exercise would also help determine Nigeria’s actual population, noting that current estimates range from 200 million to 250 million.

She said, “The President has given us till the end of this year to make sure that we capture every single Nigerian.

“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.

“That’s why it’s called a unique identifier, so that you’re only enrolled once. 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.” 

Responding to concerns about multiple registrations, Coker-Odusote said the commission’s biometric verification system prevents individuals from obtaining more than one identity.

The NIMC boss explained that while the previous system detected duplicate enrolments only after records had been submitted, the current system identifies and invalidates duplicates through biometric verification.

She added that biometric verification, including fingerprint and facial recognition, makes it virtually impossible for a single person to maintain multiple identities.

She said, “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.

“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.”