NIN: Lagos, Kano, Kaduna lead as 101 million Nigerians enroll in 2 years

Enrollment in the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC)'s National Database (NDB) for the National Identity Number (NIN) has shown a steady increase.

In July, the number of enrollments reached 101,647,882 million, surpassing the previous month's count of 101,013,279 million, as reported by NIMC. The upward trend has been consistent, with May's figure standing at 100, 021, 186.

The current upward movement in the number of enrollment is in line to meet the target of 148 million NIN by June 2024, as set by the World Bank under the Digital Identification for Development (ID4D) project.

Lagos leads top 10 states

Per usual, Lagos State reported the highest cumulative enrollment, surpassing 11 million.

Meanwhile, regional statistics revealed a nearly equal distribution of enrollments between the North and South regions.

As per the agency's data, the leading 10 states in NIN enrollment are as follows: Lagos recorded the highest with 11,072,553 enrollments, followed by Kano with 9,014,454, and Kaduna with 6,322,422.

Subsequently, Ogun had 4,275,642 enrollments, Oyo with 3,939,656, and Katsina with 3,489,915.

The Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Abuja accounted for 3,446,038 enrollments, Rivers with 3,047,043, Bauchi with 2,721,634, and Delta with 2,679,545.

Bayelsa leads bottom 10 states

During the period under review, NIMC identified the states with the lowest NIN enrollment figures.

These states are as follows: Akwa-Ibom with 1,724,916 enrollments, Imo with 1,719,366, Kogi with 1,704,748, Enugu with 1,633,335.

Yobe comes next with 1,601,989, Taraba with 1,469,578, Cross-River with 1,160,724, Ekiti with 1,009,802, Ebonyi with 810,642, and Bayelsa with 638,660 enrollments.

Male vs female enrolments

Regarding gender distribution, male enrolments accounted for 56.79% of the total, with a count of 57,726,896. On the other hand, female enrolments constituted 43.21%, totaling 43,920,986 individuals, in the National Database (NDB).

According to the Director-General, Aliyu Aziz, the commission possesses a network of more than 15,000 registration devices spread across the nation.

Additionally, the available data indicates a higher coverage of males compared to females in the registration process.

Aziz said: Analysis of the National ID database has shown that there is a low coverage and gender gap in Nigeria ID project considering the notion that there are more women than men. With over 101 million registered persons to date, only 44 per cent are females.

The data reveals a higher registration count of males compared to females. NIMC, in partnership with the World Bank, conducted gender deep dive studies to identify barriers to accessing identity.

Some of the identified barriers include lack of awareness, perceived lack of value or utility of IDs, accessibility challenges, time-consuming registration processes, lack of necessary documentation, and issues related to biometric capture, among other factors.