By Fortune Eromosele, Abuja

With many agitations about Nigeria reaching the World Bank’s National Identification Number enrollment target of 148 milliom come 2024, the World Bank has however expressed optimism of Nigeria reaching the set target.

The World Bank’s Country Director for Nigeria, Shubham Chaudhuri, in a virtual interview with pressmen, said Nigeria has a space of two years to reach the 148 million enrollment target, saying that ‘it is doable.’

He said, “So far NIMC has managed to register 58 percent, so I think there are about 62 million more that they need to register in the next two years to reach this target. I think it’s doable. It will need a kind of ramp up in terms of going into a campaign mode and having a sense of urgency about the registration process and about making it as inclusive and robust as possible.

“It will take an added sense of urgency and a real focus on follow-through. Our work is to do the pushing, the nudging and the reminders to try and convey that sense of urgency, which is often shared right at the top but doesn’t calculate down all through the ranking file of the civil service.

“It is certainly not too late, there’s still two years for Nigeria to reach this set mark, I think it is doable.”

Recall that in 2020, the federal government secured a World Bank credit facility of $430 million for NIMC under the Nigeria Digital Identification for Development (DI4D).

The project seeks to increase the number of persons enrolled for NIN from 36,894,074 as of October 11, 2019, to 148 million by June 1, 2024. Parts of the DI4D targets also include enrolling 65 million women and girls as well as 50 million children under the age of 16 by that date.

As of July 7, 2022, only 85 million Nigerians have been enrolled in the NIMC database. Nigeria has to enroll 63 million more Nigerians between now and June 1, 2024.