The Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security (FMAFS) has reaffirmed its commitment to strengthening collaboration with the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) to improve the identification of genuine farmers through the National Identification Number (NIN), as part of efforts to enhance food security and ensure targeted agricultural interventions.
The Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Abubakar Kyari, stated this during a courtesy visit by a delegation from NIMC, led by its Director-General, Abisoye Coker-Odusote, in Abuja.
Kyari said the partnership would support the creation of a verifiable and centralised database of genuine farmers, ensuring that government grants, agricultural inputs and intervention programmes reach intended beneficiaries.
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He noted that the initiative would eliminate leakages, improve transparency and strengthen sustainable food security across the country.
The Minister disclosed that the ministry had already begun deploying NIMC’s identity management infrastructure to identify genuine beneficiaries of its intervention programmes, adding that the initiative had improved transparency and increased the participation of women and youths in agriculture.
According to him, the collaboration will leverage the National Identification Number (NIN) and NIMC’s identity verification platform to authenticate beneficiaries of government agricultural programmes.
“This will ensure that interventions are targeted only at legitimate farmers and agribusiness entrepreneurs,” he emphasised.
Kyari further explained that the Federal Government had restructured its agricultural subsidy programme to promote self-reliance among beneficiaries rather than long-term dependence on government support.
“It should not be a subsidy that continues indefinitely. We have a plan whereby beneficiaries receive support in the first year, the assistance is reduced in the second year, and by the third year they should be able to operate independently,” the Minister said.
He added that the phased approach would enable more farmers to benefit from government interventions while encouraging sustainable agricultural production and improved productivity.
In her remarks, the Director-General of NIMC, Engr. Abisoye Coker-Odusote, described agriculture as one of Nigeria’s most strategic sectors because of its critical role in ensuring food security and driving economic growth.
She said the recently enacted NIMC Act 2026 had further strengthened the commission’s mandate as Nigeria’s foundational identity authority, positioning it to provide ministries, departments and agencies with secure identity verification and digital authentication services.
According to her, integrating the National Identification Number into agricultural programmes would improve accountability, reduce fraud and eliminate ghost beneficiaries while ensuring that public resources are directed to farmers who genuinely need them.
Coker-Odusote noted that stronger collaboration between NIMC and the Ministry of Agriculture would also support the Federal Government’s broader digital transformation agenda by leveraging trusted identity systems to improve public service delivery and enhance the effectiveness of social and economic intervention programmes.
She reaffirmed NIMC’s commitment to providing reliable identity verification services to strengthen the credibility, transparency and efficiency of government agricultural interventions.
