President Bola Tinubu has given the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) a firm marching order: enrol every single Nigerian into the national identity database before the clock strikes 2026 no ifs, no buts.
NIMC’s Director-General, Abisoye Coker-Odusote, broke the news on Channels Television’s Sunday Politics, revealing that the directive is part of a sweeping federal push to build a rock-solid identity system that will underpin governance, planning, and service delivery across the nation.
“The President has given us till the end of this year to make sure that we capture every single Nigerian,” she declared.
To hit that ambitious target, NIMC is leaning heavily on private sector partners under the World Bank-backed Identification for Development (ID4D) project. These front-end partners are now empowered to enrol citizens on the commission’s behalf taking the drive straight to the grassroots.
But this isn’t just about issuing numbers. Coker-Odusote stressed that the exercise will finally settle the long-debated question of Nigeria’s actual population currently estimated anywhere between 200 million and 250 million.
“How can you plan if you don’t know the total number of persons that you have?” she asked pointedly.
On the issue of multiple registrations, she shot down concerns, explaining that the new biometric verification system using fingerprints and facial recognition flags and invalidates duplicates in real time. Unlike the old legacy system, which only caught duplicates after the fact, today’s technology makes it virtually impossible for anyone to own more than one identity.
She also confirmed that telcos are already integrating with NIMC for SIM card registrations, capturing facial biometrics and matching them against the database instantly to confirm identities.
The push comes hot on the heels of President Tinubu signing the NIMC Act 2026 into law on June 26 repealing the 2007 legislation and cementing the National Identification Number as the foundational credential for accessing everything from banking and passports to land transactions and pensions.
Bottom line: If you’re Nigerian, the clock is ticking. The government is coming for your data and they’re leaving no one behind.
