FG Partners With World Bank to Introduce Digital National IDs for Nigerians

Shubham Chaudhuri, the Director of the World Bank of Nigeria has announced that it's going to partner with the National Identity Management for a successful rollout and registration of Digital National IDs for Nigerians.

This development is supposed to be completed by 2024 and by then its target is to make sure at least 148 million people of working age get their Digital National ID—this will mark a great step towards inclusion and accessibility.

He stated this on Friday at a dinner in partnership with the Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy in Abuja.

He also reassured the organization's goals of eradicating poverty, improving lives, and creating job opportunities for Nigerians.

Chaudhuri talked about the potential of utilizing digital technologies to drive transformation—he also outlined two basic areas the organization will have with Nigeria to achieve its desired goals.

He stated, 

• Our main mission here in Nigeria is to eliminate poverty, make lives better, and create jobs, for all Nigerian youth. One of the areas that we think have the greatest potential is the area of using digital technologies to transform. Now to do that it begins with having this digital national ID.

• So one of the main partnerships we have is working with NIMC to ensure the rollout of the registration so that all 213/220 million Nigerians have a digital national ID, beginning of course with all people of working age and I think the target for that is at least 148 million people by the middle of next year.

• The second is helping Nigeria lead the broadband infrastructure for broadband connectivity because Without broadband connectivity digital technologies will lead to a digital divide. So their support has been for good kinds of policies and regulations that will help invite private investment into this space and then fibre optic cables.

• One thing, for example, working with states to persuade states to reduce the right of way fees and fiber. Cable operators have to pay more when they’re getting the land to ray the cable, All that is like the foundations and real potential comes from once you have the national ID all the technologies that apps that can be built on the weather to bring services to people, to people where they get people access to finance that all of that needs skills.

Bosun Tijani, the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy also revealed that the government has secured over $500bn to kickstart a local funding program.

He said the development was going to boost innovation and entrepreneurship within the country's digital sector. “We’ve got access to about half a billion dollars to start local funding,” he said.

The Minister said that the FG plan is to domicile local funding in Nigeria and make sure it profits business owners in Nigeria—he also added that the ministry will collaborate with the Bank of Industry (BoI).

By domiciling the funding locally, the government aims at boosting the growth and development of Nigerian businesses which in turn will be of advantage to the Nation's economy.

He said,

• We want to ensure that those businesses that will benefit are true, real Nigerian businesses.

• Part of my responsibilities is working with BOI to ensure that we domicile that funding locally in Nigeria, and work with firms who manage and invest in businesses to ensure that those businesses that will benefit are true, real Nigerian businesses.

• What we are going to see is that the funding is available locally and in the coming months, it is going to become larger, and as these funds become larger, we want to leverage that money as well.

• So, the government is not just going to put half a billion and that’s it, it can bring more investors to heart as we have more money and more of our innovators can have access to resources.