Nigeria to Give All of Its 200 Million People Identity Numbers
- Government agency secured $433 million from foreign donors
- Only 38% of Nigerians have some sort of formal identification
Photographer: Pius Utomi Ekpei/AFP via Getty Images
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Nigeria wants to issue identity numbers for as many as 50 million citizens per year in a bid to create a harmonized database of its population, the largest in Africa.
The West African nation with a population of roughly 200 million has a fragmented identity system, with at least 13 federal agencies and three state agencies offering ID services. Even then, only about 38% of Nigerians have any form of identity document.