Nigerians can register for NIN, voter cards at same centres, says INEC

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) says the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) will soon deploy its officials in continuous voter registration (CVR) centres to harmonise database collection.

Mahmood Yakubu, INEC chairman, spoke on Wednesday when the NIMC management team visited the electoral umpire’s headquarters in Abuja.

Yakubu said with INEC holding the database of citizens for elections and NIMC in custody of the records of citizens generally, both agencies have the largest biometric database of citizens in Nigeria.

“Since the ultimate goal is to enrol 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.

“When the time comes, the national register of voters may simply draw from the citizenship register as is the case in many jurisdictions around the world.

“This may also enable citizens to vote in future elections from their places of choice anywhere in the country, rather than the places they register as voters, as is the case at present.

“To achieve this long-term goal, we will continue to deepen our collaboration with NIMC.”

The INEC chairman said in furtherance of the collaboration, NIMC is deploying its officials in some registration centres during the ongoing nationwide CVR.

“The idea is to provide more Nigerians who are yet to enrol for the National Identification Number (NIN) the opportunity to do so. Working with NIMC, we carried out a pilot during the recent CVR in Anambra state from 8th to 20th July 2025,” he said.

“We are now set to scale it up nationwide. Citizens will therefore have the opportunity to register as voters while simultaneously registering for the NIN.

“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.”