By Taiwo Scholarstica
The Federal Government has initiated plans to integrate Nigeria’s national digital postcode project with the National Identification Number (NIN) to strengthen digital identity, improve address verification and enhance service delivery across the country.
The development followed the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) and the Nigerian Postal Service (NIPOST) in Abuja.
The agreement formally integrates NIPOST into NIMC’s digital identity ecosystem and is expected to improve access to identity services, strengthen identity verification and support the Federal Government’s digital transformation agenda through a secure and interoperable identity system.
Speaking at the signing ceremony, the Director-General and Chief Executive Officer of NIMC, Abisoye Coker-Odusote, said both agencies had already integrated postcode retrieval into the NIN platform.
She said, “Our teams have collaborated to integrate postcode retrieval into the NIN platform, so that Nigerians will soon be able to confirm their address and retrieve their postcode through one trusted platform. This is designed to make access faster and more convenient for all Nigerians.”
According to her, combining the NIN with the National Postcode System will strengthen governance and improve access to government services, financial services, healthcare, education, logistics and emergency interventions.
Coker-Odusote also disclosed that NIPOST had been licensed as a front-end enrolment partner, allowing Nigerians to register for the NIN at post offices nationwide.
She said, “The Postmaster General and I sat down a couple of months ago, and what we did was to give them an enrolment licence to make them a front-end partner. Nigerians who want to go to post offices can enrol, and they will capture their details on our behalf.”
Describing the initiative as transformative, she added, “This particular one that we’re also working on is a game changer for the country because now you have the verified identities of individuals with verified addresses and verified locations.”
She further said, “We are making sure that there’s accuracy when it comes to address verification, which will then make the lives of the financial institutions and every other business, all private sector companies and the government trying to confirm the address of an individual in this country.”
In her remarks, the Postmaster General and Chief Executive Officer of NIPOST, Tola Odeyemi, said the digital postcode project would assign every standing structure in Nigeria a unique, GIS-enabled and machine-readable location identifier.
She said, “Every modern economy depends on two critical capabilities: knowing who people are and knowing where they are. Identity gives people access; the postcode that we’re building gives service direction.”
Odeyemi noted that although the project was conceived in 2006, it had received full Federal Government funding for the first time, describing it as a major step towards improving national addressing, service delivery and digital inclusion.