NIMC says 96.5 million Nigerians have been issued NIN as of February 2023

The National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) has said that a total of 96.5 million Nigerians have been issued the National Identification Number (NIN) as of February 22, 2023. The Commission disclosed this in its latest enrolment update. 

The latest data shows that a total of 1.43 million new enrolments were recorded in the past month as the total figure stood at 95.07 as of January 22, 2023.  

According to the statistics, Lagos State maintained the top spot by recording the highest number of enrolments in the country with 10.63 million Nigerians captured in the State. Lagos was followed by Kano State, which recorded 8.4 million registered NIN, while Kaduna came third with 5.7 million.  

According to the data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), Lagos and Kano are the two most populous states in Nigeria. NIMC’s figures also show that these two states have maintained the lead in NIN enrolment since the beginning of the exercise. 

Gender distribution: In terms of the gender distribution of the enrolees, the NIMC data reveals that 54.57 million, representing 56.5% of Nigerians so far captured in the NIN database are male, while 41.95 million, representing 43.5% are female. 

Top and bottom states: Aside from Lagos, Kano, and Kaduna, other states that made the top ten in terms of the number of enrolments include Ogun with 4 million; Oyo with 3.8 million; FCT with 3.3 million; Katsina with 3.3 million; Rivers 2.9 million; Bauchi 2.6 million and Delta with 2.6 million. 

NIMC data shows that the 10 states with the lowest NIN issued are Kogi 1.66 million; Akwa-Ibom 1.65 million; Imo 1.62 million; Enugu 1.55 million; Yobe 1.47 million; Taraba 1.42 million; Cross River 1.1 million; Ekiti 990,463; Ebonyi 774,263; and Bayelsa 611,229.  

The back story: Nigeria had for years struggled to create a credible national database through the NIN without success. However, with the new government’s policy introduced in December 2020 mandating all mobile subscribers to link their SIM with NIN, many Nigerians are being forced to enrol for the national number.  

• To address the infrastructure limitations of NIMC, which had slowed the process for years, several companies, including telecommunications operators, were licensed to act as enrolment agents. The government’s directive in April this year mandated telecom operators to bar outgoing calls from telephone lines not linked, affecting about 75 million lines. 
• Many of the affected subscribers were forced to go for the NIN enrolment and link their lines to have it restored for communications.