The Director-General of the National Identity Management Commission, NIMC, Engr. Abisoye Coker-Odusote, has declared that Nigeria has moved beyond the era of fragmented identity databases.
However, the reality on ground appears to contradict that claim as many Nigerians recount having to fill out long forms in their attempts to obtain or renew international passports, driver's licensce or even tax clearance.
Coker-Odusote claims that the National Identification Number, NIN, has become the country's master identity linking records across government and the private sector.
Speaking during the ID4Africa Annual General Meeting in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire, and in a subsequent interview with Vanguard, Coker-Odusote said NIMC has integrated key government databases based on their respective use cases, making the NIN the country's master identity while linking sector-specific identifiers such as the Bank Verification Number, BVN, to a common national identity infrastructure.
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"We no longer have fragmented databases in place because we have been able to integrate based on use cases," she said.
According to her, agencies responsible for taxation, immigration, education, healthcare, security, aviation and social intervention programmes now rely on the NIN as the common identity layer, while banks, telecommunications companies, insurance firms and fintechs authenticate customers through NIMC's real-time verification platform.
She explained that the NIN serves as the master identity across sectors, while sector-specific identifiers continue to perform specialised functions.
"The NIN is the master ID, which means your sectoral ID only works for that sector like BVN only works for the financial sector. However, the NIN works for all the sectors," she said.
Under the system, organisations are expected to authenticate an individual's identity by matching their fingerprint or facial image against the biometric record linked to the person's NIN. Once authenticated, authorised institutions can securely retrieve verified identity information through NIMC's authentication platform instead of repeatedly asking citizens to provide the same biodata.
According to Coker-Odusote, banks, telecom operators, insurance companies and fintech firms are already using this real-time verification infrastructure.
For decades, government agencies and private organisations maintained separate identity databases that rarely communicated with one another, forcing citizens to repeatedly submit the same personal information while institutions often held conflicting records for the same individual.
But based on interviews with , technology experts, bankers and policy analysts, the claim is not as straightforward Coker-Odusote made it sound. While there is broad agreement that the NIN should become Nigeria's foundational digital identity and that significant progress has been made in linking major databases, everyday experience of Nigerians has yet to reflect the seamless interoperability implied by NIMC's claim.
Experts say the continued practice of making Nigerians fill out extensive forms therefore points less to the absence of a national identity infrastructure than to uneven adoption of authentication services across institutions.
It is this gap between what the infrastructure is designed to deliver and what Nigerians actually experience that Vanguard examined.
When Mr. David Omobola recently walked into a bank in Lagos to open a new account, he expected the process to be straightforward.
After all, he already possessed a National Identification Number, NIN, the unique identifier that the Federal Government says now underpins Nigeria's digital identity ecosystem.
Instead, he was asked to complete forms containing information he believed should already exist in the national identity database.
"I recently opened a First Bank account and had to provide all my details again- my name, age, date of birth and other information -even after giving them my NIN," he told Vanguard.
For Omobola, the experience raised questions about how far integration has actually gone.
"I don't think they have fully integrated NIN into the systems of government agencies and private organisations yet. If they had, there would be less need for people to keep submitting the same information everywhere they go," he said.
The real question is no longer whether the NIN has become Nigeria's foundational identity credential - few dispute that it has. Rather, the issue is whether organisations have fully adopted the authentication and interoperability tools needed to translate that infrastructure into a seamless experience for citizens.
The cost of data mismatches
For Mrs. Mercy Obadare, a small business owner, the challenge was not repeated data collection but conflicting data.
Recalling an ordeal she endured last year, she recalled how a mismatch between her NIN record and international passport created months of frustration.
"My date of birth on the NIN was different from what was on my international passport. I don't know how it got mixed up because I provided the correct information during registration," she told Vanguard.
She only discovered the discrepancy when processing official documents.
"It was only when I needed to process some official documents that I discovered the date of birth on my NIN did not correspond with the one on my international passport."
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The discovery triggered a lengthy correction process.
"I had to start the process all over again. That meant going to the NIMC office in Alausa-Ikeja, Lagos. At the time, we were repeatedly told that the server was down. For more than six months, people kept going there without being attended to."
When services eventually resumed, she faced another challenge.
"Six months later, when the server came back, they started the revalidation process and asked me to pay more than N40, 000. By the time I completed everything, I had spent over N80, 000."
The error also affected her Permanent Voter's Card, PVC.
"My PVC had the same problem because the details did not tally. It was only after the NIN record was corrected that the PVC could also be corrected."
For Obadare, the experience illustrates one of the hidden risks of a digital identity ecosystem, where records are linked but the underlying data is inaccurate.
"We were so many with similar problems at the time," she said.
Progress, but not full integration, Yet industry stakeholders say the reality on the ground is more complex.
Founder of Afri Invoice, Mr. Mark Odenore, believes Nigeria has made progress but remains far from achieving seamless interoperability.
