Ex-NIPOST Boss Advocates for NIN and Address Linkage

Bisi Adegbuyi, the former Postmaster-General of the Federation, has called on the Federal Government of Nigeria to establish a national address system that links National Identification Numbers (NINs) to verified physical locations. He emphasized that while Nigeria has invested in digital identity through the NIN, its effectiveness is limited without reliable location data.

In a policy paper released on Monday, Adegbuyi proposed that the recent Memorandum of Understanding between the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) and the Nigerian Postal Service (NIPOST) should extend beyond a national postcode framework to create a comprehensive digital addressing infrastructure. He noted that millions of address records collected during NIN enrolment could be standardized and verified to form a trusted national location database.

Adegbuyi mentioned that during his tenure, NIPOST developed a Digital Addressing System that won the 2018 World Summit on the Information Society Prize, but the integration with NIMC was never fully realized. He suggested that NIPOST manage the official postcode system while NIMC oversees identity-linked address verification.