Nigeria’s $430 million Digital Identification for Development Project is facing fresh implementation delays as unpaid enrolment partners, prolonged technology procurement and a widening national identity registration gap undermine the Federal Government’s efforts to build an inclusive digital identity system.
This is even as the federal government has requested another 12-month extension of the project, moving its closing date from December 31, 2026, to December 31, 2027, while approximately $196 million, representing 45.6 percent of its total financing, remains undisbursed.
The request, contained in a World Bank restructuring paper dated October 22, 2026, marks the third extension since the project received approval in February 2020, bringing cumulative extensions to 42 months, or three and a half years.
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The latest restructuring exposes operational and institutional challenges confronting the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), particularly its ability to sustain enrolment activities, deploy new technology and convert registrations into successfully generated National Identification Numbers (NINs).
One of the immediate obstacles is the failure to pay enrolment partners, who, according to the World Bank report, have not received payments since January 2026.
The bank said the project must strengthen its billing system to generate audited payment reports required to facilitate payments to the affected partners.
The development raises concerns about the sustainability of Nigeria’s nationwide identity registration drive, which depends partly on enrolment agents and partners to expand access beyond major urban centres.
Without regular payments, the ability of these partners to sustain field operations and support the government’s ambitious registration targets could come under further pressure.
The funding position also highlights the gap between financial commitments and actual implementation. Although the project has total financing of $430 million from the World Bank’s International Development Association, the French Development Agency and the European Investment Bank, cumulative disbursement stood at approximately $234 million, leaving about $196 million undisbursed.
The World Bank’s financing summary separately puts IDA’s undisbursed balance at $18.83 million, indicating that the wider outstanding amount covers all three financing partners.
The project, which became effective in December 2021, was initially scheduled to close in June 2024. It subsequently received a six-month extension and another two-year extension before the latest request.
Beyond the financing and payment difficulties, delayed deployment of the National Identity Management System 2.0 has emerged as another major factor behind the extension.
The contract for the new platform was signed on September 15, 2026, following a prolonged procurement process. Implementation, which would ordinarily require approximately 18 months, has been compressed into 15 months, with full deployment and data migration scheduled for December 15, 2027.
The platform is expected to replace fragmented proprietary systems with an open-source infrastructure designed to improve processing capacity, interoperability and data protection.
However, the compressed implementation timeline means the project will depend on successful technology deployment and data migration before its revised closing date.
Although NINAuth was launched in May 2025, the project’s digital authentication targets remain unmet because integration into the new platform is still pending.
The technology delay has implications beyond the completion of the registration exercise. A fragmented identity infrastructure could limit the ability of government agencies and private institutions to authenticate identities efficiently, weakening the wider economic value of a unified digital identity system.
Meanwhile, Nigeria is struggling to close a significant gap between its NIN registration achievements and its original target.
As of September 30, 2026, approximately 121 million people had successfully obtained NINs, against the project’s target of 180 million, leaving a deficit of 59 million.
Although this represents an increase of about 84 million from the baseline, NIMC must substantially accelerate enrolment to achieve the target within the extended implementation period.
The World Bank report said NIMC had reconfirmed its commitment to reaching 180 million registrations but would need to increase its average monthly enrolment rate from 1.5 million to 3.9 million.
This represents an increase of approximately 160 percent, placing considerable pressure on the commission’s operational capacity, enrolment network and technology infrastructure.
The difference between enrolment records and completed NIN issuance also presents a challenge. More than 140 million enrolments had been recorded by September 14, but only 121 million had completed biometric and demographic validation as well as duplicate checks.
The gap suggests that expanding physical registration alone may not be sufficient to achieve the national target without improving the systems responsible for processing and validating identity records.
Women and children also remain significantly underrepresented. As of June 2026, 40.4 million women and girls had obtained NINs against a target of 79 million, while 26.3 million children under 16 had been registered against a target of 60.83 million.
To address the shortfall, the project is prioritising the deployment of 7,000 procured mobile enrolment devices by January 2027, agent training, expanded ward-level registration and the commencement of school-based enrolment by December 2026.
The ward-level campaign, which began in March, had generated 10 million NINs, according to the report.
The World Bank warned that failure to extend its involvement would also force the other financing partners to close their participation in the project.
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“If the project is not extended by WBG, all other co-financiers will also close,” the bank stated.
The proposed extension therefore provides additional time to complete the technology transition, address outstanding operational constraints and expand registration.
However, the central challenge is no longer simply extending the project timeline or making additional financing available. It is whether NIMC can resolve payment bottlenecks, accelerate technology deployment and significantly increase validated registrations within the revised deadline.
With nearly half of the project’s financing still undisbursed and 59 million registrations outstanding, the next 12 months will be a critical test of whether Nigeria can translate its substantial digital identity investment into a functioning national infrastructure.
Royal Ibeh is a senior journalist with years of experience reporting on Nigeria’s technology and health sectors. She currently covers the Technology and Health beats for BusinessDay newspaper, where she writes in-depth stories on digital innovation, telecom infrastructure, healthcare systems, and public health policies.
