By Elizabeth Adegbesan, with agency report

The National Identity Management Commission, NIMC, said it plans to enrol and issue National Identity Numbers (NIN) to 70 million Nigerians before the end of 2019.

NIMC

According to the commission, the aim of issuing NIN is to bring citizens into the country’s payments system

The Director-General, NIMC, Mr. Aliyu Aziz, disclosed this in an interview with Bloomberg in Abuja.

Aziz stated: “Nigeria plans to issue identity numbers to 70 million citizens by the end of next year, a first step to bringing them into the country’s payments system.

“Concerned that large segments of its population remained outside of the banking and payments system, Nigeria formed a partnership with Mastercard Inc. to issue identity cards embedded with their payment chips in 2015. There are plans to expand the collaboration by including other payments companies, with the ultimate target of covering all citizens.

“In addition to the facilitation of payments, the identification numbers and the accompanying cards will be used for tax and health insurance administration, voter verification and help keep track of population changes,” Aziz said.

He noted that NIMC will integrate and harmonize back-end database of agencies and at the same time allow the agencies to have areas of interaction with citizens.

Aziz further stated: “Nigeria, which currently holds centralized data for less than 15 percent of its almost 200 million population, will integrate various identity-capturing and verification systems run by other government departments, banks, and mobile-phone companies.

“We currently have silos of identity with several agencies. The NIMC will play the role of the harmonizer and coordinator of the back-end database while allowing all the other agencies to have touch points and areas of interaction with the citizens.”