Nigeria’s Digital ID Scheme: An Exercise in Social Exclusion?

Nigeria’s proceeding with major biometric and digital ID initiatives they say will help modernize and digitize the country’s public services while boosting social and financial inclusion. But such efforts also could violate users’ privacy and perhaps shut them out of various institutions and services — all while giving governments and adjacent institutions unprecedented power.

As of December 2023, 104.16 million people in Nigeria have signed up for a National Identification number (NIN), a unique, biometrically linked 11 digit number assigned to individuals upon their enrollment into Nigeria’s National Identity Database (NIDB). The NIN is key to Nigeria’s efforts to streamline the country’s biometric and digital ID services, where a NIN is used to apply for Nigeria’s new National ID card, referred to as an eID (sometimes stylized e-ID) or general multipurpose card (GMPC). While the eID/GMPC remains unavailable at the time of writing, Nigerians can now apply for one in anticipation of its expected launch in August.

Precisely, the Thales group, a government and NATO contractor involved in a number of digital ID projects worldwide, claims that participating in the Nigerian eID program will provide the user with a variety of benefits, where a Nigeria National ID card can serve not only as proof of identification, but also as a travel document and and biometric ID, where the card holds the user’s fingerprint information collected during NIN registration. (Thales was selected as an eID card supplier.)

What’s more, Nigeria’s National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) proposes that the new ID system will be payment-integrated, allowing the national ID card to function like a bank card. As per the organization’s X account, “the National Identity Management Commission is working with the Central Bank of Nigeria and the Nigerian Interbank Settlement System to deliver the payment and financial use cases” where “the card will be issued through the applicants' respective banks.”

In the future, further, the GMPC card’s capacities could also expand to include a variety of public services and utilities: according to Thales Group, “complementary applications such as a driver's license or e-services, including eVoting, eHealth, or eTransport, will be implemented” during a future phase of the roll out. 

Altogether, Nigeria’s digital identification infrastructure could be used for a number of civic activities and services, making it a possible keystone of daily life.

Fostering Social Inclusion — Or Exclusion?

Nigeria’s eID strides are part of the World Bank’s“Digital Identification for Development” project (often referred to as “Identification for Development” or “ID4D”), where the World Bank is a primary funder, with substantial support from the French Development Agency (AFD) and the European Investment Bank (EIB), as an effort to expand access to identification services in the developing world.

Generally, ID4D proponents argue that facilitating access to physical IDs where lacking can help marginalized populations better access jobs, myriad services, and public life generally. A World Bank report on ID4D emphasizes the significance of physical ID access in a new report, highlighting that over 850 million people worldwide lack official ID of any kind, and highlights that expanding ID access as key to women’s inclusion in Nigeria, where the majority of people with physical IDs are men.

ID access proponents make similar arguments for expanding biometric and digital ID access. Touting the projects’ variety of use cases, Nigeria’s NIN and eID/GMPC proponents tout the project’s convenience and propensity for social and economic inclusion. Namely, the Thales Group depicts Nigeria’s e-ID program as “the broadest financial inclusion program on the [African] continent” as per its proposed bank card-like payment functionality. In the NIMC’s words, likewise, the new ID will “empower citizens” and “encourage increased participation in nation-building.”

Less discussed are digital identification initiatives’ unique privacy and ethical ramifications. Indeed, writers and activists warn about digital IDs’ possible weaponization against already marginalized groups, including under- or undocumented migrants and ethnic minorities. And a 2018 World Economic Forum (WEF) report on digital ID, further, highlights the tool’s propensity to include and exclude people from public life: “[f]or individuals, [verifiable IDs] open up (or close off) the digital world, with its jobs, political activities, education, financial services, healthcare and more.” (Emphasis my own.)

Along similar lines, activists at non-profit Access Now have expressed concerns about World Bank’s digital ID-centered approach towards development. Fearing that World Bank’s digital ID plans are untested and “at odds with human rights,” they instead propose that development efforts should be tailored around communities’ needs. Namely, as per Marianne Díaz Hernández, a campaigner at Access Now: 

The World Bank’s Identification for Development (ID4D) Initiative funds a development agenda based around expanding digital ID, when it should be establishing one around people and communities…By implementing digital ID systems that are unchecked, untested, and, most importantly, at odds with human rights, this high level institution is not only risking the privacy of millions, but setting a dangerous precedent for global decision-makers.

In an open letter, further, Access Now and a number of civil society organizations, individuals, and digital rights groups called for the World Bank to “cease activities that promote harmful models of digital identification systems (digital ID).” It highlighted that while World Bank has engaged with civil society about the prospects of advancing digital ID programs, such engagement has not led to major changes in the programs’ rollout: 

Mounting evidence collected by civil society organizations and independent researchers and experts establishes that digital ID systems regularly have a harmful impact on human rights. Researchers at NYU Law School highlighted these findings in a recent report on how the World Bank and its Identification for Development (ID4D) Initiative support and fund a development agenda around digital ID. Although ID4D has shown a willingness to engage with civil society, this dialogue has not led to meaningful changes in policy or practice. Critically, compelling evidence from countries such as India and the Dominican Republic has not triggered adjustments in the Bank’s approach to supporting national governments that are building or upgrading digital ID systems. The World Bank continues funding the rollout of these programs, as in the Philippines, with new systems on the horizon, as in Mexico.

Others, meanwhile, are not even convinced digital ID’s benefits for the general population are clear. As per a press release from New York University Law School’s Center for Human Rights and Global Justice, digital ID’s benefits are “ill-defined and poorly documented” for most, but appear slated to help powerful institutions, governments, and corporations: “where digital ID systems have tended to excel is in generating lucrative contracts for biometrics companies and enhancing the surveillance and migration-control capabilities of governments.”

Despite extensive critiques about its digital ID system rollouts, and digital ID generally, World Bank’s efforts have continued in Nigeria and beyond, though the project was almost halted in Nigeria due to a failure to meet NIN registration numbers goals. Zooming out, digital ID is becoming a major industry: as per Juniper Research, digital ID application downloads are slated to grow to 5.2 billion by 2029, encompassing the majority of humanity.

A Messy ID Rollout

Meanwhile, Nigeria’s biometric and digital ID roll-outs to date can be described as messy, if not coercive. As research from the Engine Room research group done in 2018-2019 indicates, many Nigerians knew little about digital ID services (referred to in the report as the NIMC digital ID program) upon enrollment, and that there was little government consultation with the public about the emerging services services. Some people the Engine Room project interviewed, further, felt pressured to sign up for the digital ID program, and even that the government was “threatening to withhold other key documents to make [registration] happen.” 

The Nigerian government has also taken restrictive steps to accrue biometric NIN sign ups, even previously cutting off telecommunications for a whopping 73 mobile phone million users for failure to link mobile SIM cards with a NIN in late 2022. Critically, safety was proposed as a key reason for barring non NIN-registered numbers, where the President ordered phone lines to be linked to an NIN to “to curb rising incidents of abductions in the country's northern region.” Along similar lines, the Central Bank of Nigeria has instructed Nigerian bank customers to link their NIN with their Bank Verification number (BVN) or otherwise risk frozen accounts, a move potentially jeopardizing 70 million bank accounts in Nigeria. 

While NIN access allegedly promotes inclusion, meanwhile, not obtaining an NIN can apparently bar Nigerians from accessing key public services. As African Digital Rights network researchers Tony Roberts and Ridwan Oloyede explain, biometric and digital ID registration policies, like those existing for the NIN, can exclude those lacking necessary paperwork (birth certificates, etc.). The problem can snowball, where Roberts and Oloyede explain that not having an NIN can therefore “lock [people] out from obtaining a SIM – and therefore from mobile connectivity –- and from government services that increasingly require mobile or internet service to access.”

And it’s not the first time “inclusion-forward” digital infrastructure rollouts have in fact shut people out. Notably, proponents boast that Nigeria’s e-ID program is loosely based on India’s Aadhaar digital and biometric ID system. While the Aadhaar system is widely depicted as a success story, providing almost 93 percent of India’s population with a digital ID, Privacy International and the Centre for Internet and Society highlight the system’s propensity for harm in a previous report, where researchers note that “issues such as exclusion from key services, discrimination, increased surveillance, and access to fundamental social rights have and continue to plague the Aadhaar system.” 

Indeed, Aadhaar’s linkage to India’s welfare schemes has meant those not registered or otherwise improperly registered into the Aadhaar system have sometimes been unable to access food rations and other critical government assistances they were once entitled to, leading to starvation and even death in some of India’s poorest provinces.

While the outcomes of Nigeria’s digital ID efforts remain to be seen, a clunky or haphazard scheme roll-out that bars Nigerians from key services a la the Aadhaar system seems plausible within the context of millions of Nigerians’ access to phone and banking services already jeopardized under current conditions.

Privacy Concerns Mount

Meanwhile, Nigeria’s aforementioned plans to link biometric and digital ID schemes to other services spark possible privacy problems in their own right. Namely, as African Digital Rights Network’s Tony Roberts and Ridwan Oloyede explained in Reuters in 2022, extensive linkages between digital IDs, SIMs, banking services and the like could altogether create a “powerful infrastructure for state surveillance”: 

Linking digital IDs and mobile SIMs, and linking these with mobile banking apps and other digital services, is the “unholy trinity” of digital surveillance. When combined with further government or corporate data, this surveillance stack enables governments to track an individual’s real-time movements, transactions, email, voice and social media communications, providing a powerful infrastructure for state surveillance.

Such privacy issues are not new, and involve both public and private sectors. Along a similar vein, Nigeria’s decision to partner with Mastercard in 2014, for example, to create a biometric ID card that could also facilitate bank payments, came under fire due to privacy concerns, poor optics, and anger that a major (Western) corporation was granted oversight over critical societal infrastructure.  

“The new ID card with a MasterCard logo does not represent an identity of a Nigerian. It simply represents a stamped ownership of a Nigerian by an American company,” Nigerian politician Shehu Sani had said at the time. “It is reminiscent of the logo pasted on the bodies of African slaves transported across the Atlantic.” Notably, the Nigerian government partnership with Mastercard ended in 2019 after a Federal High Court in Lagos found Mastercard, which was ordered to pay 114 billion Naira for damages, guilty of malpractice.

Similar issues arose in a previous ID effort back in the early 2000s, where French tech company Sagem (partly owned by the French government) paid bribes to secure a contract to produce 70 million Nigerian ID cards, resulting in a major public scandal. (It’s still unclear what happened to the personal data Sagem collected to make the cards). Despite the previous Sagem scandal, Nigeria’s now collaborating with Idemia Group, an offshoot of the Sagem company, to ensure its biometrics infrastructure can handle the data of about 250 million biometric IDs.

While attempting to prioritize Nigerians’ data privacy with efforts including the 2019 Nigeria Data Protection Regulation (NDPR), the Nigerian government is now fighting allegations of major system data breaches, including allegations that websites are selling Nigerians’ personal data and info, including NINs and BVNs, collected from government sources. The government has denied Nigerians’ data is at risk; digital rights advocates in kind question their claims.

The Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) Connection

While privacy and inclusion concerns surround Nigeria’s identification project rollouts, Nigeria’s NIN’s likely linkage to financial services, as per aforementioned proposals to provide bank card-like functionality to new ID cards, also paves the way for myriad privacy and civil liberties issues regarding Nigerians’ finances. Such concerns, after all, plague Nigeria’s emerging Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), the eNaira, where CBDCs are digital versions of a country’s fiat currency, facilitated through its central bank. 

As I previously reported in ScheerPost, namely, the eNaira has faced a tenuous roll-out in Nigeria, even contributing to a disastrous cash “crunch” which led to severe physical money shortages in early 2023. (The country has faced subsequent cash shortages of varying severity). 

As I highlighted in ScheerPost, the eNaira rollout continues despite chronically low uptake amongst Nigerians, who have hesitated to adopt the eNaira due to both a societal reliance on cash (Nigeria’s economy, after all, has a large informal sector) and widespread government mistrust. 

Other privacy and security concerns plague CBDCs generally, where critics fear centralized digital payment systems could give governments unprecedented oversight and even control over peoples’ financial transactions. Namely, if CBDCs become programmable, where terms and limits could be built-in or established on a digital currency’s use, it’s plausible that abusive governments could even limit, block, or otherwise manipulate one’s access to their funds.

Despite these issues, as I previously reported in ScheerPost, it appears a connection between digital ID and CBDC in Nigeria, and in general, remains likely:

Nigeria has clear intentions to connect digital ID with its CBDC… a Bank for International Settlements report stated that Nigeria’s eNaira would not be anonymous under any circumstances, even for “lower-tier [digital] wallets” holding less money.

Altogether, while digital ID poses certain surveillance and exclusionary risks in its own right, the tool’s propensity to serve as a “foundation” for other critical potentially restrictive, especially digital infrastructure cannot be understated.

A Power Grab?

Ultimately, Nigeria’s elaborate digital ID plans propose to unite myriad ID-related services under one roof, where a digital ID can act as a travel document, provide biometrics, and perhaps grant the recipient access to other critical services, like voting or social welfare programs.

Such digitized tools may well provide convenience to users, and may facilitate increased access to jobs, education, and other public services as daily life becomes ever-more paperless. But critically, such digital tools — in Nigeria and beyond — cannot only be welcomed for the possible benefits and conveniences they bring to society. Rather, their propensity for harm, especially in the forms of surveillance and digitized societal exclusion, must be considered and critiqued in kind. 

Zooming out, digital IDs’ apparent benefits to the power elite in Nigeria and internationally deserve scrutiny. Namely, powerful institutions like the World Bank and United Nations claim digital ID systems can promote financial and civic inclusion, but such claims obfuscate digital IDs’ possible prospects for expanding infrastructure that can enable surveillance and the social exclusion of civilians, and therefore ability to provide governments and other governance structures with unprecedented power over the population. 

If these digital ID systems are rolled out without critical public debate, therefore, it seems that the world’s most powerful are slated to benefit — at the expense of the public.