The National Identity Management Commission in Nigeria has received $45.5 million from the World Bank as part of the Digital Identification for Development (ID4D) initiative.
The monies were distributed in multiple installments between December 2021 and April 2024, and the payout is still under progress, according to the World Bank‘s implementation report.
In February 2020, the project received approval from the Bretton Woods Institute for $430 million. Of that amount, $45.5 million was allocated, or approximately 10.5% of the project’s overall cost.
The European Investment Bank ($215 million), the French Agency for Development ($100 million), and the World Bank’s International Development Association ($115 million) each contribute $105 million to the project.
“This will enable people in Nigeria, especially marginalised groups, to access welfare-enhancing services. The project will also enhance the ID system’s legal and technical safeguards to protect personal data and privacy,” the World Bank said in a statement.
The goal of the programme is to have more Nigerians registered in the National Identification Number database.
Nigeria is still behind track even though the project’s June 1, 2024, deadline for enrolling 148 million people in NIN has passed.
As of May, NIMC Director General Abisoye Coker-Odusote reported that there were 107.34 million NINs, up from the 104 million that were registered in December 2023.
The project’s success has been described by the World Bank as “moderately satisfactory,” and as of April of this year, 107.3 million NINs had been issued, according to NIMC.
The PUNCH revealed in April that NIMC and digital identity provider IDEMIA Smart Identity have decided to extend their long-term partnership in order to improve NIMC’s biometrics.
By 2025, 200 million Nigerians are expected to be registered in the National Identity Number system.
“As of today, over 105 million NINs have been issued to Nigerians and legal residents. We want to assure Nigerians that within the next one or two years, we will reach our target of enrolling all Nigerians,” the commission said in a statement.
As per Smile Identity’s KYC research, national ID systems in Africa encountered an average daily downtime of 6% in 2022.
Although there is potential for the digital ID project, there are still issues with effectively managing the data and guaranteeing the integrity of the identity system to stop fraud and underage registrations.
The media revealed on March 16 that a website called expressverify was making money off of the retrieval of NINs and private data from the Nigerian identity database.
According to reports, the website provided unfettered access to NINs and personal information of Nigerians listed in the NIMC-managed national identity database.
Due to the website’s violation of data protection regulations, the Nigeria Data Protection Commission increased its investigation of NIMC licence holders in response to the event.
The public was informed by NIMC that strong defences against cyberattacks were in place, and the organisation complies with both the Nigerian Data Protection Law and ISO 27001:2013 requirements.
Experts had advised the commission to act quickly to limit the number of times that third parties might access the NIN database.
Esigie Aguele, the CEO and co-founder of VerifyMe Nigeria, stated that the problem of access proliferation needs to be properly handled.
