On 27 June 2026, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu signed the National Identity Management Commission (Amendment) Act, 2026 — the first substantive overhaul of the 2007 statute. The Bill had passed both chambers of the National Assembly the previous week, after a fourteen-month committee process that ran in parallel with debates on the Sixth Alteration to the Constitution. The Presidency framed it as long-overdue modernisation. Civil-society groups read it as something more ambitious — the formal legalisation of the *de facto* identity gate that the 2020 SIM-NIN directive had already built.
Four changes matter most.
First, the amendment restructures NIMC from a single Commission under the Minister of Interior into a Commission with a board chaired by the Vice-President, a CEO appointed by the President subject to Senate confirmation, and dedicated directorates for enrolment, verification, data protection, and inter-agency liaison. The intent is to end the cycle of supervisory ministries — Interior, Communications, the Presidency — fighting for control of the register.
Second, it expands the lawful purposes for which NIN data may be shared with security and law-enforcement agencies, listing the DSS, NIA, NPF, EFCC, NDLEA, NSCDC and the Office of the National Security Adviser by name, and removing the case-by-case ministerial approval the 2007 Act had required. Requests must still be logged with the Nigeria Data Protection Commission, but no longer pre-authorised.
Third, it re-prices the system: enrolment for citizens remains free, but modification, re-issuance, and bulk verification fees are now set by the Commission with NDPC oversight rather than by ministerial fiat — replacing the chaotic March 2024 fee episode with a published tariff regime.
Fourth, it mandates the harmonisation of the BVN, driver's licence, voter card, tax, immigration and SIM registers under the NIN as the single anchor identifier — a goal the 2007 Act had set as aspirational and the 2026 Act sets as obligatory, with a deadline of 31 December 2027.
What the amendment does not do is equally important. It does not create a statutory right of action for Nigerians whose NIN data is leaked or misused beyond what the 2023 NDP Act already provides. It does not require independent audits of NIMC's verification API. It does not address the estimated 80–100 million Nigerians — disproportionately under-18s, women, and northern rural populations — who are not yet enrolled and now live in a country where the unenrolled cannot bank, travel, learn, or transact. And it leaves the constitutional question raised in *Paradigm Initiative v AGF* (2022) — whether the legislature can lawfully condition every adult right on a single administrative number — untouched.
The 2007 Act gave Nigeria a number. The SIM directive of 2020 gave the number teeth. The 2026 amendment, signed today, gives both a permanent legal home. Whether that home becomes the inclusive identity layer the World Bank's ID4D programme described in 2016, or the rentier permission slip its critics warn against, is a question the Sixth Republic will spend the next decade answering.