In line with President Buhari’s remarks after he was enrolled by NIMC and issued his National Identification Number, a marching order has been issued to all government agencies collecting demographic and biometric data of citizens and legal residents, to aggregate their data into a single databank, to be domiciled with and managed by the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC).

The directive was issued by Vice President Osinbajo at a meeting held at the presidential villa on Monday 21st December 2015 and attended by data collecting agencies of government and the Nigeria Inter-bank Settlement System (NIBSS).

Vice President Osinbajo also directed that a technical committee be set up, comprising the affected agencies and to be coordinated by NIMC, to define the parameters and methods to achieve the data aggregation. The committee has until the third week in January 2016 to submit a preliminary report to the Vice President.

Prof. Osinbajo explained that government’s interest in the aggregation of citizens’ data is basically to assist it cross certain hurdles in its quest to improve the socio-economic landscape of Nigeria, particularly targeting the poorest and most vulnerable persons, as well as to issue unique identification numbers to every Nigerian and legal resident for the improvement of national security, among others.