From the World Bank, Nigeria has received commendation and high rating on its Identity for National Development (ID4D) efforts. The Bretton Woods institution stated that Nigeria’s Identity Management Commission (NIMC) has been recording important progress in this area. The Explainer learnt that as at December 2023, data released by the Commission showed that 104.16 million Nigerians had been issued NIN, representing 70% of the target population.
Meanwhile, under the project, NIMC is expected to have issued the National Identification Number (NIN) to 148 million Nigerians by June 2024. In its latest implementation report on the project published recently, the World Bank noted that “NIMC is making satisfactory progress.”
In the report, the World Bank further explained that NIMC has updated its Android enrolment software which will shorten the time of data capture. According to the report, “updates include the reduction of the enrolment fields to 10 minimal fields, and the introduction of a two-factor authentication for enrolment officers amongst other features of the upgrade are completed.
“In addition to shortening the enrolment time, the project has established relationships with humanitarian and civil societies to ensure the inclusive capture of women.
“Enrolment numbers reached ~45 million from ~15 million at the onset of the project, which is 59.4% of the targeted female enrolment.
“Features of the completed upgrade include a child enrolment use case and school-based enrolment campaigns, which were tested during the test phase enrolments.
“The total child enrolment reached 16 million from almost nothing at the onset of the project, which is 31.1% of the targeted child enrolment,” the project report stated.
However, while there have been concerns recently about unauthorized access to the NIN database, the report indicated that there have been substantial updates in the different components of the NIMS, such as new enrolment of front-end software, middleware solutions, key life-cycle modules, and many more. All of these, it said, have led to better safeguards and built-in data security enhancement.
The report partly reads, “On the other hand, the system does not currently allow the real-time NIN generation. Efforts are underway to improve the efficiency of the systems which will reduce the time between NIN application and NIN generation.
“NIMC is working on updating the back-end solutions to enable this. Specifically, the ABIS and middleware vendors, IDEMIA and Nadra,” it said.”
The ID4D project, which commenced in 2019, is being financed through an International Development Association (IDA) credit of US$115 million and co-financing of US$100 million from the French Agency for Development and US$215 million from the European Investment Bank.
According to the World Bank, which facilitated the loans and monitored the project, as of April 30, 2023, a total of $35.6 million had been disbursed for the implementation of the project. The bank said the objective of the Digital Identification for Development Project for Nigeria is to increase the number of persons with a national ID number, issued by a robust and inclusive foundational Identification (ID) system, that facilitates their access to services.
