The World Bank has identified outstanding payments to national identity registration agents and operational challenges as major obstacles to Nigeria’s efforts to expand National Identification Number (NIN) coverage, revealing that approximately 59 million Nigerians were yet to be enrolled as of September 2026.

In its October 2026 restructuring paper on Nigeria’s Digital Identification for Development (ID4D) project, the bank disclosed that the enrolment process had been affected by delays in compensating Front-End Partners (FEPs) engaged by the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC).

According to the report, the registration partners had not received payment for their services since January 2026, a situation that has disrupted enrolment activities and threatens the government’s target of issuing 180 million NINs.

The World Bank’s figures showed that about 121 million Nigerians had obtained their NINs as of September 30, 2026, leaving a gap of roughly 59 million before the target can be achieved.

The bank stressed that resolving the payment challenges was essential to sustaining the enrolment exercise, noting that NIN registration remained central to access to public services, financial inclusion and digital identity verification.

The development comes amid differing figures previously presented by NIMC officials regarding the country’s enrolment progress.

Last month, the Director of NIMC’s Strategic Programme Office, Dr Alvan Ikoku, disclosed during a discussion with DPI Alumni that the commission had registered approximately 142 million Nigerians in its database, although only about 100 million had been issued NINs.

Ikoku also revealed that President Bola Tinubu had directed the commission to increase national identification coverage to 95 per cent of the population by December 2026.

To address the outstanding payments, the World Bank recommended that NIMC strengthen its billing process to produce properly audited reports of payments owed to registration partners, enabling timely settlement of their claims.

The bank listed the resolution of the payment backlog among seven key actions required from the commission to sustain enrolment and achieve the 180 million registration target.

Other recommended measures include activating a Learning Management System (LMS) for the training and certification of enrolment agents, distributing 7,000 mobile devices acquired under the project and expanding registration services to schools and communities with limited access to enrolment centres.

The restructuring document fixed October 31, 2026, as the deadline for operationalising the learning platform, while the deployment of the 7,000 devices, equipped with the necessary enrolment software, was scheduled for January 2027.

However, a senior NIMC official, who spoke anonymously to The Guardian, explained that the commission’s immediate responsibility regarding the outstanding payments was to compile invoices submitted by the Front-End Partners and forward them to the World Bank.

The official’s clarification suggests that the settlement process involves further administrative steps, even as the commission faces pressure to accelerate enrolment and close the country’s identification gap.