NIMC enrolls 32.8m women as NIN issuance hits 75 million

•Lagos, nine others lead
•North West leads other regions with 19 million captured Nigerians

About 32,833,179 women across the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory have been captured for the National Identification Number (NIN) as enrolment data showed that the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) has captured 75 million Nigerians.

The number of men captured as of February 21, 2022, was 42.5 million. Going by the data, it means that 56 per cent of Nigerian males and 44 per cent of Nigerian women have been captured in the exercise.

For those in the Diaspora, the statistics showed that 99, 214 people have been captured, were 44, 033 were females and 55, 181 were men.

According to the NIMC data dashboard made available to The Guardian, yesterday, the highest cumulative enrolment figure of over 8.7 million was recorded in Lagos State. The state leads nine others with the highest data captured.

Specifically, Kano is second with 6,148,337; Kaduna 4,485,752; Oyo 3,068,005; Ogun 3,044,046; FCT Abuja 2,836,167; Rivers 2,296,830; Katsina 2,255,297; Delta 2,082,347 and Borno 1,957,248.

Bottom performing states are Akwa-Ibom 1,350,087; Imo 1,278,015; Zamfara 1,247,829; Enugu 1,242,934; Yobe 1,108,883; Taraba 1,105,349; Ekiti 865,024; Cross-River 851,238; Ebonyi 616,590 and Bayelsa 511,694.

Regionally, North West had the highest captured figure of 19, 027,660; South West 18,839,104; North Central 12,980,431; North East 9,393,896; South South 8,768,421 and South East 6,461,424.

Last November, the Director-General of the NIMC, Aliyu Aziz, disclosed moves by the commission to get more Nigerians enrolled into its national identity database. He projected over 200 million enrolments in the national identity database.

Aziz, an engineer, disclosed this while giving his remarks at the KOICA Cameroon team visitation of the e-government training centre in Abuja.

According to the NIMC boss, the plan was to ensure that all Nigerians have a digital identity everywhere they go.

He said, “In Nigeria, we have freedom. We go anywhere without any ID. But now, it is a digital era, and we want to correct that. So, we have a proposed digital identity system that would ensure we capture every Nigerian, even in the Diaspora.”

The Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Prof. Isa Pantami, had recently commended the efforts of the management of NIMC, stressing that despite the several challenges, especially lack funds, the Commission issued over 30 million NINs within a year.

Pantami said on assumption of office, he inherited only 1,600 enrolment centres, which had since increased to over 4,000 across the country.

MEANWHILE, complacency on the part of Nigerians has contributed to the rush in getting the NIN and forced the Federal Government to shift the date from the initial December 30, 2020, to March 31, 2022, after about eight times.

Recall that mandatory use of the NIN actually took effect from January 1, 2019, but there was no vigour behind it. Precisely, at its meeting on September 12, 2018, chaired by President Buhari, the Federal Executive Council (FEC) approved the new National Digital Identity Ecosystem Strategic Roadmap for enrolment of Nigerians and legal residents into the National Identity Database (NIDB).