Nigeria, the most populous Black Country in the world with over 140 million people is set to join the league of fast emerging economies like China and India. However, the infrastructural challenges and structural limitations of the economy are becoming more apparent each day. One of the most subtle challenges that receive little or no attention in many business cycles and fora is the lack of an identification system⁽¹⁾ that ensures each individual personal detail can be independently verified online and real time.

One must acknowledge the attempts of the present and past Nigerian governments at fixing the problem even though we can say with authority that all past efforts failed largely due to poor enlightenment, corruption and mismanagement of the registration mechanism. The failure of previous attempts is made worse by the fact that the proposed identifiers in previous attempts have no biometric features thereby making the end product susceptible to imitation and fraud.

The importance of a national identification system cannot be underestimated as it aids planning and governance, financial intermediation, social and welfare program administration among other benefits. In addition, the infrastructure pays for itself as it prevents the need for a future census with the related costs and lost man hours involved with sit-at-home orders.
By far, the most damaging impact of a lack of national identification system is that it has ensured that credit expansion is limited to the formal sector. Personal consumer loans such as the purchase of a car, household appliances and even mortgage loans are restricted to individuals with employment in the top tier of the formal sector leaving over 90% of the population without access to credit.

Kenya and South Africa boast of a robust national identification system with electronic trails that can provide up-to-date information on a person’s bio-details. Today, Ghana is set to launch its national identification system with fingerprint recognition.

The success of the Nigerian credit bureau infrastructure being pursued by the consortium of banks and International Finance Corporation (IFC) is severely hampered by the lack of an identification system. I sometimes think we have placed the ‘cart before the horse’ as Nigeria is simply unprepared for the emergence of a credit bureau without a robust identification system.

If we must succeed and jumpstart the Nigerian economy, we must ensure credit expansion is guaranteed and extended to the entire citizenry as long as it is within the confines of the laws of the country. Indeed, to ensure this, we must establish a foolproof national identification system.

We will consider the far reaching implications of the continued lack of a national identification system in subsequent writings.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
⁽¹⁾The national identification system in the author’s opinion is one of the four main steps to take to ensure Nigeria’s preparedness to jumpstart its economy for the new decade.