NIN Enrollment: World Bank to provide technical support for Nigeria 

The World Bank is to provide the National Identity Management Commission, (NIMC), with technical support in Nigeria’s drive to capture all citizens and foreign residents in the country.

The Senior Social Development Specialist with the World Bank based in Abuja, Victoria Korsiak who is working with the Nigeria Identity for Development project made this known at a stakeholders workshop, organised by the Nigeria Digital Identification for Development Project, ID4D.

Korsiak said the Nigerian government has recognised the importance of digital identification inclusion which necessitated the project.

“The government, the Ministry of Finance NIMC and Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy have all recognised how central and important the NIN is for people to be able to have access to services for us to be able to link people across all the sectors in government.

“We are like technical partners giving technical assistance;  the government says we want to achieve this we can help them to design the strategy for achieving that goal.

“We are providing technical support to NIMC to this team (ID4D) that you see here today in the project implementation unit for thinking about what’s the best way to do this. What’s the best way to set up an enrollment system that covers everybody”, she noted.

Speaking on the workshop on inclusiveness, she stressed the need for stakeholders input in achieving the set goal.

“So, this is a really important initiative of the project because we need to hear from civil society, MDA’s other non-state actors, donors and the international community on what are the issues for accessing national ID number NIN”.

Read also:National Identification Numbers enrollment hits 70m – NIMC

According to her, the goal of the project is to cover all of Nigeria, residence or not with the NIN.

“We also know that there are some people that are very hard to reach both for geographic reasons but also trust issues, lack of awareness and knowledge about the NIN.”

The Coordinator for ID4D, Musa Idole in his welcome address said, the Project Development Objective has mandated the project to create a robust foundational ID system for Nigeria.

He said  that this would involve NIMC and the Civil Registration system under the National Population Commission (NPC).

“The project had begun engagement with the NPC for areas of support, including digitising the registration of births and deaths, capacity building and a review of their legal and institutional frameworks.”

The project has also initiated steps towards strengthening the legal framework on identification and data in Nigeria. Addressing the legal and legislative framework is key at this time. Enactment of a data protection law and amendment of some other existing laws, such as the NIMC Act are important to our operations,” he added.