Building a case for an integrated national unique identification system in Nigeria

Olusesan A. Makinde, Viable Knowledge Masters

Good and efficient governance can no longer be separated from the level of advancement and use of information and communications technology (ICT) in a country. Several low and middle income countries have begun adopting electronic governance systems for the efficient management of citizen information. However, these efforts are threatened by various challenges. In Nigeria, the government has mandated the national identity management commission to issue unique national identifiers to citizens but this organization is different from the National Population Commission which registers births and deaths and relationship is not clearly defined. Likewise, several other institutions (Telecommunications regulator, Banking, Federal Road Safely) in the absence of a unique national identification system have created somewhat parallel documentation systems in the interim. We argue that there needs to be better coordination and streamlining of these several institutions which will improve effectiveness and efficiency of the identification system.