NIMC Captures 89 Million Nigerians In Database

National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) announced on Thursday that more than 89 million people have been registered in the current national National Identity Number (NIN) enrolment.

At a press conference held in advance of the 4th National Identity Day, which is slated for Friday in Abuja, Aliyu Aziz, Director-General of NIMC, revealed this.

The celebration's theme for this year is "Traditional Institutions as Critical Stakeholders for Citizens Mobilization."

In addition to the seven million people he encountered when he took office in November 2015, he claimed that there were an additional 82 million people.

According to Aziz, the commission will collaborate with established organisations to engage the general public as part of the day's commemorative events.

“In this year’s Identity Day, we are partnering with the traditional institutions and their leaders to create awareness on NIN enrolment.

"Since then, we have been growing the database at the average of two to three million monthly.

"The 89million is the mainstream people so there are still remaining local people in villages, petty traders, market people and artisans in rural areas across the country. NIN is the right of everyone,” he said.

Aziz claimed that identity was a tool for empowerment and that increased usage of digital identity might contribute to the development and coordination for better government service delivery.

In order to prevent errors in the enrollment process, he advised the new enrollees to always travel with literate people, noting that the commission has boosted its equipment upgrading from 1000 to 29,000 nationwide.

Aziz claimed that their data centres' failure was caused by an equipment upgrade and stated that the commission has added more equipment to enhance the enrollment process.

As soon as the integration was complete, he assured the audience, that the commission will permit users to independently modify their data through the NIMC app.

The Director-General reaffirmed that enrollment was free for all citizens and legal residents notwithstanding his earlier claim that the commission assessed fees for changing participants' biodata.

He asked the media to continue the effort to inform the people in the hinterland, especially in their own languages.

The United Nations has established a goal of achieving identity for all people by the year 2030. Since 2018, Nigeria has become the first nation to observe ID Day.