Tinubu orders NIMC to register all Nigerians before end of 2026

President Bola Tinubu has directed the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) to ensure that every Nigerian is enrolled in the country’s national identity database before the close of 2026.

The Director-General and Chief Executive Officer of NIMC, Abisoye Coker-Odusote, disclosed the directive during an appearance on Channels Television’s Sunday Politics, describing it as a key part of the Federal Government’s strategy to strengthen governance, planning and public service delivery through a comprehensive identity system.

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

Coker-Odusote explained that the commission is accelerating nationwide enrolment through the World Bank-backed Identification for Development (ID4D) initiative by engaging accredited private partners to register citizens across the country.

“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 explained.

She noted that the National Identification Number (NIN) is designed to provide every citizen with a single, unique identity, eliminating the possibility of multiple valid registrations.

“That’s why it’s called a unique identifier, so that you’re only enrolled once,” she added.

According to the NIMC boss, the nationwide registration exercise will also provide Nigeria with a more accurate population figure, as current estimates vary between 200 million and 250 million people.

“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.

Addressing concerns over duplicate registrations, Coker-Odusote said NIMC’s upgraded biometric verification system now detects repeated enrolment attempts instantly, unlike the previous platform that identified duplicates only after records had been submitted.

“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 said.

She further stated that biometric tools such as fingerprint and facial recognition technology have made it nearly impossible for individuals to maintain multiple identities.

> “Absolutely. 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 development follows President Tinubu’s signing of the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) Act 2026 into law on June 26, replacing the 2007 legislation.

The new law strengthens the Federal Government’s “One Person, One Identity” policy by establishing the National Identification Number as the primary identity credential for accessing public services and key private sector services, including banking, passport processing, taxation, pensions, land transactions and consumer credit.