Ex-NIPOST boss urges FG to link NINs with verified addresses

Former Postmaster-General of the Federation, Bisi Adegbuyi, has called on the Federal Government to use the recent partnership between the National Identity Management Commission and the Nigerian Postal Service to build a national address system that links every National Identification Number to a verified physical location.

He argued that while Nigeria has invested heavily in digital identity through the National Identity Number, the system remains limited if government agencies cannot reliably determine where individuals, businesses and public assets are located.

In a policy paper released on Monday, Adegbuyi said the Memorandum of Understanding recently signed by NIMC and NIPOST should not be confined to developing a national postcode framework but expanded into a broader digital addressing infrastructure that integrates identity, location and public service delivery.

“Identity answers who. Location answers where. A functional digital society requires trusted answers to both questions,” he wrote.

The former postal chief said the distinction is significant because postcodes alone identify geographical areas rather than specific people or properties.

He argued that combining location intelligence with identity records would strengthen planning, improve service delivery and enable government institutions to verify addresses with greater certainty.

According to him, millions of address records already collected during NIN enrolment provided a foundation for such a system.

Rather than waiting for a nationwide postcode rollout to be completed, he said those records could be standardised, geocoded and verified to create what he described as a trusted national location database.

“A national identity system becomes considerably more useful when the identity holder can be connected, with measurable confidence, to a real-world location,” he said.

Adegbuyi disclosed that NIPOST had attempted a similar approach during his tenure.

He said the agency developed a Digital Addressing System and an Address Verification System designed to combine physical addresses, digital coordinates and identity verification into a single platform for government and commercial use.

The project, he noted, won the 2018 World Summit on the Information Society Prize, and discussions were subsequently opened with NIMC on integrating the platform with the National Identity Number database.

He, however, said the proposed integration was never fully implemented.

He proposed a model in which NIPOST would continue to administer the country’s official postcode system while NIMC manages identity-linked address verification, arguing that the two institutions have complementary rather than competing responsibilities.

“NIPOST supplies the official postcode. NIMC supplies the trusted identity relationship. Address intelligence connects, resolves and continuously improves the information between them,” he said.

Beyond identity management, Adegbuyi argued that verified location data could improve policing, emergency response, tax administration, social investment programmes and logistics by allowing government agencies to accurately identify people, businesses and infrastructure.

He also linked the proposal to local government administration, saying councils require reliable geographic data to plan infrastructure, manage property records, improve internally generated revenue and deliver basic services.

Adegbuyi further argued that the country’s long-term economic ambitions would depend not only on expanding digital identity coverage but also on digitally mapping productive assets across the country.

“Nigeria’s ambition should extend beyond connecting the NIN to a postcode,” he wrote, adding that farms, markets, transport corridors and businesses should become part of an integrated national digital location framework.

He urged the Federal Government to encourage indigenous innovation in digital mapping technologies and equip local governments with the tools needed to maintain accurate location data.

According to him, the challenge has evolved beyond postal administration into a broader governance issue requiring coordinated institutional action.

“Nigeria’s addressing challenge is not merely a postal problem. It is an identity problem, a security problem, a local government capacity problem and increasingly, a national trust problem,” he stated.