PRESIDENT Bola Tinubu has directed the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) to ensure that every Nigerian is enrolled in the national identity database before the end of 2026, the agency’s Director-General and Chief Executive Officer, Abisoye Coker-Odusote, has disclosed.
News Point Nigeria reports that Coker-Odusote made the revelation while speaking on Channels Television’s Sunday Politics, where she explained that the directive forms part of the Federal Government’s broader efforts to establish a comprehensive national identity system capable of supporting effective governance, planning and service delivery across the country.
“The President has given us till the end of this year to make sure that we capture every single Nigerian,” she said.
According to the NIMC boss, the commission is already working with partners under the World Bank-supported Identification for Development (ID4D) project to accelerate nationwide enrolment.
“What we have done is we have partnered through the World Bank ID4D project with front-end partners. They are part of the digital identity ecosystem. These are private citizens that we’ve enabled and given jobs to enrol citizens on our behalf,” she explained.
Coker-Odusote stressed that the National Identification Number (NIN) remains a unique identifier designed to ensure that every individual is registered only once.
“That’s why it’s called a unique identifier, so that you’re only enrolled once,” the NIMC Director-General added.
She further stated that Nigeria’s actual population figure remains uncertain, with estimates ranging from 200 million to 250 million people, making the establishment of a comprehensive identity database essential for national planning and development.
“It is estimated that we’re 200 million. When we’re done enrolling, we will then know the actual numbers that we have. Some estimates say 230 million, while a few people say 250 million.
“Your identity is basically the foundation for effective governance and service delivery. How can you plan if you don’t know the total number of persons that you have? We have been mandated by Mr President to go down to the community levels to enrol every single Nigerian,” she said.
Responding to concerns about the possibility of individuals obtaining multiple identities by registering in different locations or under different names, the NIMC chief said the commission’s biometric verification system has effectively closed such loopholes.
She explained that while the previous system could accept duplicate registrations before detecting them later, the current process automatically identifies and invalidates multiple enrolments.
“The legacy system had no way of verifying at the front end whether you had already been captured. Once the record comes into the system, it flags it as a duplicate or that the person already exists in the database.
“You would only have one identity generated for you. The other record goes into a deduplication bucket where it is invalidated,” she said.
Coker-Odusote added that biometric verification, including fingerprint and facial recognition technology, has made it virtually impossible for an individual to maintain multiple identities.
“Absolutely. One of the things that this Act has done is to cement our role in capturing biometrics. Private and public sector organisations will no longer capture biometrics independently. They will validate identities through API integration with NIMC.
“The telcos are already doing that with us. If you need a SIM card, they capture your facial biometrics, which are matched against our database in real time to confirm that you are who you claim to be. We’re using biometric validation to tighten security around identity confirmation,” she said.
Her remarks come just weeks after President Tinubu signed the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) Act 2026 into law on June 26, repealing the previous legislation enacted in 2007.
The new law reinforces the Federal Government’s “One Person, One Identity” policy by making the National Identification Number the country’s foundational identity credential for accessing government and essential private-sector services, including banking, passport applications, tax administration, pensions, land transactions and consumer credit.
The legislation also introduces tougher penalties for identity theft, multiple registrations and unauthorised access to personal identity data, while strengthening data privacy protections and granting NIMC broader powers to investigate identity-related offences.