Nigeria’s NIN Programme Helped by the Law of Unintended Consequences

Nigeria’s National Identification Management Commission (NIMC) is tasked with assigning a unique National Identity Number (NIN) and issuing General Multi-Purpose Cards (GMPC) to 148 million citizens by 2024. The enrolment programme was sporadic, to say the least, until a spate of kidnappings triggered a change in its fortunes.

The national identity database and registration for the eleven-digit NIN which identifies Nigerians using biometric data and other personal details were initiated in August 2011 by the then-president Goodluck Jonathan.

The former president received his own National Electronic (e-ID) card in August 2014, when he set the commission a target to enrol all Nigerians on the database by the end of 2014. By this time, it transpired, only 5 million had been enrolled on the database and issued a NIN.

Several reasons were suggested as to why the figure was so low, including: public cynicism, unfavourable perception of the identity sector, extortion and corruption. Some residents attributed their negative attitude toward the registration to not seeing the need for it.

NIN becomes compulsory

To boost NIN enrolment, the Jonathan presidency and the subsequent administration of President Muhammadu Buhari instituted further policies to encourage enrolment by making its use compulsory to access certain government programmes.

Today, tens of government programmes are involved which cannot be undertaken without a valid NIN. They include workers’ registration under the Contributory Pension Scheme, application for and ownership of a driving licence, opening and operating a bank account, accessing health insurance, filing tax returns, registering for and sitting the Joint Admissions and Matriculations Board (JAMB) exams, voting during the elections and, most recently, making mobile phone calls.

In the years up to 2020, the take up of NIN can best be described as erratic ¹. 3.8 million NINs were issued in 2014 (year-on-year increase of 234%), 2,202,818 in 2015 (year-on-year decrease of 42%), and then increases followed by decreases until 5,017,806 NIN’s were issued in 2020, representing a year-on-year decrease of 14%.

In December 2020, a government pronouncement through the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) directed all telecommunication providers to link the roughly 300 million Subscriber Identification Modules (SIMs) owned by Nigerians to each person’s NIN by the end of the year. The date of this ‘deadline’ has been reviewed several times until about 75 million SIMs were disconnected and barred from making calls in late February 2022.

According to the government, the NCC directive was made to curtail the rising spread of kidnapping for ransom in some parts of the country and facilitate the tracking down of suspects, but it strongly correlated with a huge spike in the enrolment in the national database and issuance of NINs. At the time the order was given, a total of around 43 million NIN records were on the NIMC database.

12 months later, at least 28 million new records were added to the database according to the NIMC, bringing the figure to 71 million in December 2021 and over 82 million by the end of May 2022.

It may be simplistic to explain the consistent rise in NIN enrolment in recent times by the linking of a phone subscriber’s SIM to their NIN, as other positive factors are at play. For instance, the number of enrolment centres across the country and in the Nigeria diaspora has been on the increase. In February 2021, the NIMC had 1,060 enrolment centres, rising to 14,000 by December 2021. Similarly, the number of enrolment centres in 38 countries in the diaspora rose to 152 by March 2022.

In 2020, the Federal Government secured a World Bank credit facility of $430 million for the NIMC under the Nigeria Digital Identification for Development (DI4D). The project seeks to increase the number of persons enrolled for NIN to 148 million by June 2024, but even with the funding, and aided by the positive impact of SIM registration, there are still major concerns as to whether this target will be met – such as allegations that 7.9 million NIN records have gone missing and the practice of issuing temporary NIN slips instead of physical ID cards.

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