World Bank’s 148 million NIN target, doable — Shubham

Despite widespread concern regarding Nigeria’s ability to meet the World Bank’s National Identification Number enrolment target of 148 million by 2024, the World Bank has voiced hope that Nigeria would meet the objective.

Shubham Chaudhuri, the World Bank’s Country Director for Nigeria, stated in a virtual interview with pressmen that Nigeria has two years to accomplish the 148 million enrolment target, adding that “it is possible.”

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.”

Remember that the federal government acquired a $430 million World Bank credit line for NIMC under the Nigeria Digital Identification for Development programme in 2020. (DI4D).

The project aims to boost the number of NIN enrollees from 36,894,074 on October 11, 2019, to 148 million by June 1, 2024. Part of the DI4D aims include enrolling 65 million women and girls by that date, as well as 50 million children under the age of 16.

Only 85 million Nigerians were enrolled in the NIMC database as of July 7, 2022. Between now and June 1, 2024, Nigeria must enrol 63 million additional Nigerians.