Over 21.3m Nigerians now have national ID number

The number of Nigerians that have been registered into the national identity database and issued with the National Identification Number (NIN) has risen to 21.360million, the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) has said. The new enrolment figure was reached as at the close of work on 6th September, 2017, the NIMC’s Director General/CEO, Engr. Aliyu […]

The number of Nigerians that have been registered into the national identity database and issued with the National Identification Number (NIN) has risen to 21.360million, the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) has said.

The new enrolment figure was reached as at the close of work on 6th September, 2017, the NIMC’s Director General/CEO, Engr. Aliyu Aziz, said in a statement issued in Abuja on Monday.

He also said the Commission had setup more enrolment centres across the 36 States of the country and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), bringing the number of enrolment centres to about 805.

With the deployment of additional enrolment centres, NIMC is currently active in 556 Local Government Areas (LGAs), and is working to activate dormant centres in the remaining 218 LGAs in order to expand enrolment coverage, according to the NIMC boss.

He said recent impetus in the registration process is in line with the earlier resolve of the Commission to get 28 million Nigerians registered into the database, by the end of December, 2017.

According to him, the Commission has continued to record exponential growth in the population of the database, despite the challenges facing the Commission, even as the country gradually exists recession.

It will be recalled that the Commission had little above seven (7) million NINs in the database when Engr. Aziz took over the mantle of leadership in November, 2015.

Despite the challenges and constraints, the Director General said he had continued to manage the scarce resources, to ensure that the database is populated before the commencement of enforcement of the mandatory use of the NIN for all identity based transactions in the country.