The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has announced that officials of the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) will soon be deployed to continuous voter registration (CVR) centres across the country to harmonise citizens’ data.
INEC Chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, disclosed this on Wednesday when he received the NIMC management team at the Commission’s headquarters in Abuja.
Yakubu explained that while INEC maintains the database of registered voters, NIMC holds the broader records of citizens, making both agencies custodians of the largest biometric databases 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,” Yakubu said. “At that time, the national register of voters may simply draw from the citizenship register, as is done in many countries.”
The INEC chairman added that such integration could enable Nigerians to vote from any location in future elections, rather than being restricted to polling units where they registered.
To advance this collaboration, Yakubu said NIMC had already piloted the initiative during the CVR exercise in Anambra State from July 8 to 20, 2025, and is now ready to scale it nationwide.
He noted that the deployment will allow Nigerians who have not yet enrolled for the National Identification Number (NIN) to do so while registering as voters, thereby deepening synergy between both institutions and strengthening electoral activities.