77.1M Identity Numbers Issued as NIN-SIM registration Ends

The National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) has issued 77.1 million unique National Identification Numbers (NIN) in the country.

This new milestone was attained on March 21. It comes as the deadline for the verification and linking of NIN to Subscriber Identification Module (SIM) cards ends today.

While Nigerians await the next direction on the NIN-SIM exercise from the Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy, the verification exercise, which started in December 2020 has had the deadline shifted eight times.

As at the end of 2021, the number of Nigerians without NIN, going by NIMC statistics, was 134.4 million, while issued NINs stood at 70 million. But from January to March, 7.7 million more NINs were issued. By implication, it means some 126.7 million Nigerians are still without NIN.

 males were allocated 43.3 million, while the female folks have 33.7 million.

Geographical registrations showed that Lagos leads with 8.89 million, while Kano has 6.3 million. Kaduna has 4.5 million, Ogun (3.14 million), Oyo (3.13 million), FCT (2.88 million), Rivers (2.35 million), Katsina (2.34 million), Delta (2.12 million) and Borno (1.99 million).

The 10 leading states from the bottom are Kebbi (1.6 million), Sokoto (1.57 million), Osun (1.56 million), Gombe (1.5 million), Kogi (1.4 million) and Kwara (1.41 million). Others are Abia (1.4 million), Akwa Ibom (1.36 million), Imo (1.31 million) and Enugu (1.26 million).

North West leads with the regional distribution with 19.5 million, followed by South West with 19.3 million. North Central has 13 million; North East has 9.5 million while South-South and South East residents were 8.9 million and 6.58 million respectively.

NIMC, which recently opened its third NIN diaspora enrolment centre in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, puts the diaspora issuance at 118,529, with a gender ratio of 65,533:52,996 in favour of men.