More women in Kano State have their National Identity Numbers (NINs) compared to Rivers and Oyo State, according to a new report.
The latest Inclusion For All (I4ALL) dialogues report by the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) show that Kano leads with 78.2 percent, Rivers State with 46.6 percent and Oyo State has 58.1 percent.
“This is contrary to the expectation that women in the northern parts of Nigeria would generally be lower in access to all forms of official documentation. According to the key informants from Kano State, women are able to enrol for NIN at the local Islamic Centres,” it said.
It said religious authorities encouraging NIN or PVC enrollment for women would supercede the gender restrictions on women from the community or household level.
NIN is a set of numbers assigned to an individual upon successful enrolment. It helps to tie all records about a person in the database and is used to check the identity verified and also helps the government verify the identity of those needing essential social services.
The report which was carried out among 309 + informants and discussants also reveals that rural women are very productive, engaging in multiple income-generating activities to contribute to their households as well as the community economy.
It revealed that women in all three states recognise some benefits to having official types of identification particularly having a bank account and registering a mobile phone.
“Their recognition of the benefits to having official types of identification particularly to having a bank account and registering a mobile phone is a pathway to accelerate their formal inclusion,” it said.
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Chinasa Collins-Ogbuo, Head at I4ALL Inclusion for all initiatives, said “Women are the most excluded groups, during our study in those locations we had done preliminary analysis from the previous data of Enhancing Financial Innovation and Access (EFInA).”
“The analysis revealed to us that these groups of people are likely to be excluded from financial access because of IDs, and they are more likely to be women in rural communities who are traders or farmers,” she said.
Further breakdown of the study reveals that from the data it is clear that while there are differences among the problems in level of severity both within and between the localities, lack of capital remains the biggest problem for the women in all of the surveyed states.
“There are variations with some of the other problems such as insufficient and poor-quality land being rated as a more serious problem for women in Rivers than in Kano or Oyo states,” it said.
According to the National Identity Management Commission, the number of registrations and National Identity Numbers (NINs) issued by the National Identity Management Commission surged by 439.1 percent to 27.1 million in 2021 from 5.0 million in 2020.
The surge in NIN registration can be attributed to various factors, including the federal government’s response to increasing insecurity in the Nigerian telecoms sector.
To combat kidnappers who used unregistered SIM cards to contact victims’ families for ransom, the government implemented a ban on the sale and activation of new SIM cards in December 2020.
The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), the telecoms industry regulator, was mandated to enforce SIM registration and linkage with the NIN.
“The objective of the exercise was to verify and ensure compliance by mobile network operators with the set quality standards and requirements of SIM card registration as issued by the Federal Ministry of Communications and digital economy and the commission,” NCC said.
The World Bank expects 148 million Nigerians to have a NIN by 2024 through the digital Identification for Development (ID4D) roadmap.
The objective of the project is to increase the number of persons with a national identification (ID) number, issued by a robust and inclusive foundational ID system that facilitates their access to services.
Apart from 148 million enrollments, the World Bank expects 65 million registrants to be women and 50 million to be children.
