The National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) says it has issued the National Identification Number (NIN) to 102.39 million Nigerians as of August 28, 2023.
The Commission disclosed this in its NIN enrolment data just which also shows that enrolment for the ID number was yet to pick up after slowing down in July.
In August, the total enrolment figure stood at 743, 085, which is slightly higher than the 634,603 recorded in July this year.
The enrolments in the last two months were low considering that the database had been growing by an average of 1 million in preceding months.
However, with the recent appointment of a new Director-General, Abisoye Coker-Odusote, NIMC said 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 led administration.
According to the NIMC data, Lagos State maintained the top spot by recording the highest number of enrolments in the country with 11.17 million Nigerians captured in the State.
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This was followed by Kano State, which recorded 9.07 million register.
The two most populous states in Nigeria, according to the data from the National Bureau of Statistics, have maintained the lead in NIN enrolment since the beginning of the exercise.
In terms of the gender distribution of the enrollees, the NIMC data reveals that 58.15 million, representing 56.8% of Nigerians so far captured in the NIN database are male. On the flip side, 44.23 million, representing 43.2% of the total enrollees are female.
Aside from Lagos and Kano, other states that made the top ten in terms of the number of enrolments include Kaduna with 6.3 million; Ogun with 4.3 million; Oyo with 3.9 million; Katsina 3.5 million; FCT with 3.4 million; Rivers 3 million; Bauchi 2.7 million and Delta which also recorded 2.7 million.
NIMC data shows that the 10 states with the lowest NIN issued are Akwa-Ibom 1.7 million, Imo 1.7 million, Kogi 1.7 million; Enugu 1.64 million, Yobe 1.6 million, Taraba 1.47 million, Cross River 1.17 million, Ekiti 1 million, Ebonyi 818,173, and Bayelsa 642,233.
The slowdown in enrollments in August may further affect the country’s ability to meet the World Bank’s target under the Digital Identification for Development (ID4D) project. Under the project terms, Nigeria is expected to have issued 148 million NIN by June 2024.
Even with an average of 1 million enrolments monthly, Nigeria is not certain to meet the deadline which is now less than a year.
Aside from issuing NIN to 148 million Nigerians by 2024, the Bank listed other targets to include 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.
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