Tinubu Gives NIMC Deadline to Register Every Nigerian by December 2026

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 Commission's Director-General and Chief Executive Officer, Abisoye Coker-Odusote, has disclosed.

Speaking on Channels Television's Sunday Politics, Coker-Odusote said the directive forms part of the Federal Government's drive to establish a comprehensive national identity system capable of improving governance, national planning and public service delivery.

"The President has given us till the end of this year to make sure that we capture every single Nigerian," she said.

According to her, the Commission has expanded its nationwide enrolment campaign through partnerships under the World Bank-supported Identification for Development (ID4D) programme.

She explained that NIMC has engaged accredited private-sector partners across the country to serve as front-end enrolment agents, enabling the Commission to reach more Nigerians at the community level while creating employment opportunities within the digital identity ecosystem.

"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 said.

Coker-Odusote stressed that the National Identification Number (NIN) remains a unique identifier designed to ensure that every Nigerian is registered only once.

"That's why it's called a unique identifier, so that you're only enrolled once," she stated.

The NIMC boss also said the nationwide enrolment exercise would help establish Nigeria's actual population, noting that current estimates vary significantly.

"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 that individuals could obtain multiple identities by registering under different names or at different locations, Coker-Odusote said the Commission's biometric verification system now makes such abuses virtually impossible.

She explained that while the previous identity management system could accept duplicate registrations before detecting them later, the current platform verifies applicants at the point of enrolment, preventing multiple identities from being created.

"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 explained.

According to her, biometric technologies, including fingerprint and facial recognition, now serve as the foundation for identity verification across government and private sector services.

"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.

The renewed enrolment drive comes weeks after President Tinubu signed the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) Act 2026 into law on June 26, 2026, replacing the 2007 Act.

The new legislation reinforces Nigeria's "One Person, One Identity" policy by making the National Identification Number the country's foundational identity credential for accessing key government and essential private-sector services, including banking, passport applications, taxation, pensions, land transactions and consumer credit.

The law also introduces tougher penalties for identity theft, multiple registrations and unauthorised access to personal identity data, while strengthening data protection safeguards and expanding NIMC's powers to investigate identity-related offences.

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