The National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) says that over 100 million Nigerians have no identity.
The agency’s Director-General, Mr Aliyu Aziz, while speaking during a zoom meeting on the topic “Strategic Roadmap for ID Development” disclosed that just 38% of the country’s population have a means of identity.
He said: “Over 100 million Nigerians have no identity (ID). These include the poorest and the most vulnerable groups, such as the marginalised – women and girls, the less-educated people, migrants, refugees, asylum seekers, stateless persons, people with disabilities and people living in rural and remote areas.
“The estimated population of Nigeria stands at 200 million. Only about 38 per cent of the population has any form of ID.”
Aziz said the commission had enrolled and issued 41.5 million unique identifiers, known as National Identification Numbers (NIN), since the commencement of identity registration and enrolment in 2012. According to him, the commission registers all Nigerian citizens physically present and those outside Nigeria as well as legal residents.
“From 2012 till date, only 41.5 million citizens and legal residents have been enrolled into the National Identity Database (NIDB) and issued unique NIN, an average of 5.2 million enrolments per annum. “At this rate, it will take a long time to enrol the remainder of the people currently living in the country. By that time, about 292 million more people would have been added.
“Hence, there is the need for a strategy to enrol the backlog within the shortest possible time. And that is the reason for the idea of strategic roadmap and the birth of the ecosystem approach,” he said.
