Key highlights
- More Nigerians enrolled for the NIN in March bringing the total enrolment figure to 97.49 million.
- Lagos remains the state with the highest number of enrollees.
- 2 million, representing 56.6% of Nigerians so far captured in the NIN database are male.
A total of 97.49 million Nigerians have been captured in the national identity database of the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC). According to NIMC’s latest enrolment update, this figure was recorded as of March 24 this year.
The latest data shows that a total of 1 million new enrolments were recorded in the past month as the total figure stood at 96.5 as of February 22, 2023.
According to the statistics, Lagos State maintained the top spot by recording the highest number of enrolments in the country with 10.7 million Nigerians captured in the State. Lagos was followed by Kano State, which recorded 8.5 million registered NIN, while Kaduna came third with 5.9 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 55.2 million, representing 56.6% of Nigerians so far captured in the NIN database are male, while 42.26 million, representing 43.4% 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 Akwa-Ibom 1.66 million; Imo 1.63 million; Enugu 1.56 million; Yobe 1.48 million; Taraba 1.42 million; Cross River 1.1 million; Ekiti 994,219; Ebonyi 779,899; and Bayelsa 617,398, while Diaspora enrolments stood at 387,089.
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 enroll 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.
With all these success story, those private companies that did this job are yet to be paid their money since December 2021. This project may also hit the rock unless these companies are paid. The companies have run out of money for logistics and salary for those workers who go from village to village to enroll people on the data base..
NIMC is taking the glory and credit meanwhile the executors of the project are wallowing in poverty out of a deliberate non payment of agreed fees by NIMC