The National Identification and Registration Authority (NIRA) has printed over 10 million national identity cards as it struggles to meet its targets for the national ID registration and renewal exercise.
In May 2025, NIRA embarked on a mass registration and renewal exercise targeting 15.8 million national IDs that were set to expire by June 2025. The exercise also aimed to register 17.2 million new applicants, including children under 17 years and citizens who missed the 2014 registration.
“In regard to renewals, changes of particulars, and issuance of first national identity cards for people who already had a National Identification Number (NIN), we were targeting 15.8 million, and we have achieved 14,311,277,” said NIRA Registrar Claire Ollama.
She revealed that 10 million IDs have been printed, with 2.5 million already collected from district offices. However, NIRA fell short of its target to enroll 17.2 million new applicants.
“The majority of these were children and minors who do not access services on their own. Their ability to access registration services was entirely dependent on an adult, caretaker, benefactor, or parent. As we have consistently noted, there was sluggishness in this area, and it is painful to report that we only managed 37.3% of the target,” Ollama said.
She explained that ID printing depends on the number of people who qualify for a card, noting that not everyone who is enrolled qualifies to receive one. As such, printery targets are based on processed data that is ready to be converted into physical cards.
“By the close of business yesterday, NIRA had achieved 10,152,559 cards printed, which is commendable considering that about 14 million applicants were card-related,” she said.
Out of these, 7,261,435 cards had been dispatched to 146 districts across the country. By the close of business yesterday, 2,058,457 cards had been issued, representing 35% of the 7.2 million dispatched cards.
