The National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) has disclosed that it has issued 102.39 million National Identification Numbers (NIN) to Nigerians as of August 28, 2023.
The commission disclosed this in its NIN enrollment data released on Wednesday.
The data revealed that Lagos state maintained the top spot by recording the highest number of enrollments in the country with 11.17 million Nigerians captured in the State, followed by Kano state, which recorded 9.07 million registered NIN.
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Other states that made the top ten in terms of the number of enrollments include Kaduna with 6.3 million; Ogun with 4.3 million; Oyo with 3.9 million; Katsina with 3.5 million; FCT with 3.4 million; Rivers with 3 million; Bauchi with 2.7 million and Delta with 2.7 million.
The 10 states with the lowest NIN issued are Akwa-Ibom with 1.7 million, Imo with 1.7 million, Kogi with 1.7 million; Enugu with 1.64 million, Yobe with 1.6 million, Taraba with 1.47 million, Cross River with 1.17 million, Ekiti with 1 million, Ebonyi with 818,173, and Bayelsa with 642,233.1.
In terms of the gender distribution of the enrollees, the NIMC data also disclosed that 58.15 million, representing 56.8 percent of Nigerians so far captured in the NIN database are male, while 44.23 million, representing 43.2 percent of the total enrollees are females.
From all indications, the slowdown in enrollments may affect Nigeria’s ambition of issuing 148 million NINs by June 2024.
Recall that the World Bank’s target under the Digital Identification for Development (ID4D) project, was for Nigeria to have issued 148 million NIN by June 2024.
Aside from issuing NIN to 148 million Nigerians by 2024, the bank listed other targets including the issuance of NIN to at least 65 million female Nigerians by June 1, 2024, as well as 50 million NIN to children under 16 years of age.
The data revealed that enrolment for the identity number was yet to pick up after slowing down in July.
However, with the recent appointment of a new director-general, Engr. Abisoye Coker-Odusote, NIMC assured that it has started working to accelerate the issuance of the digital identity token in line with the renewed hope mandate of President Bola Tinubu’s administration.
