The Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Professor Mahmood Yakubu, on Wednesday September 3rd, 2025 played host to Engr. Abisoye Coker-Odusote, Director-General National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) at the electoral Commission’s national headquarters in Abuja.
The meeting was to deepen collaboration between INEC and NIMC with the aim of providing opportunities for Nigerians to register as voters while simultaneously registering for the NIN.
Receiving the NIMC boss in audience, Prof. Yakubu said the collaboration is a decisive step since INEC holds the database of citizens for the purpose of elections while NIMC has the record of citizens generally.
While acknowledging that the two agencies hold the largest biometric databases of citizens in Nigeria, INEC Chairman said it’s in furtherance of the collaboration that NIMC is deploying officials to some of its registration centres during the ongoing nationwide Continuous Voter Registration (CVR).
He said the idea is to provide more Nigerians who are yet to enroll for the National Identification Number (NIN) the opportunity to do so.
Prof. Yakubu explained that the Commission has carried out a pilot survey during the recent CVR in Anambra State, stating that it’s now set to scale it up nationwide.
“In due course, NIMC will provide details of the locations of our CVR centres where it will deploy its officials and also provide the modalities for the NIN registration.
“We welcome this partnership with NIMC which is in keeping with our commitment to synergise with every national institution to strengthen electoral activities in Nigeria.
“Since the ultimate goal is to enroll every citizen with NIMC, we look forward to the day when your database will serve as the single source of truth for citizenship identification in Nigeria”, he said.
To achieve this long-term goal, Prof. Yakubu said INEC will continue to deepen collaboration with NIMC.
Speaking earlier, Coker-Odusote emphasized that the collaboration with INEC is geared towards building a unified identity database for the country.
