The National Addressing Council (NAC) has approved a preliminary framework for a digitised national addressing system that will assign every Nigerian citizen and registered business a verified digital address, according to Stanley Nkwocha, spokesman and senior special assistant to the president on media and communications (Office of the Vice President), who announced the decision in a post on X on Tuesday.

Nkwocha said the decision was taken at a council meeting chaired by Vice President Kashim Shettima in Abuja on Monday, with public and private sector stakeholders in attendance. Under the new arrangement, the Federal Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation will serve as secretariat of the council, coordinating technical implementation, systems integration and standards.

“Under the Renewed Hope Agenda, our duty is to build institutions that match the energy and mobility of our people,” Shettima said, adding that the addressing system must “locate every community, support enterprise without barriers and strengthen government without compromising privacy.”

The vice president said the system is designed to link every citizen’s verified identity to a verified address — a connection he said would support financial inclusion, planning, security and emergency response. The identity half of that equation already exists in large part: NIMC operates the National Identification Number (NIN) scheme, under which more than 100 million Nigerians have enrolled. Addressing has been the harder gap to close. Formal street addresses remain incomplete across much of the country, and deliveries routinely depend on landmarks and phone directions — a shortfall that complicates know-your-customer checks, loan recovery and last-mile delivery for banks, couriers and e-commerce platforms. EFInA’s 2023 access-to-finance survey estimated adult financial exclusion in Nigeria at about 26%.

How responsibilities are split across Nigerian agencies

The council assigned distinct roles to different agencies under the new framework:

• The National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) will handle individual address verification and authentication.
• The Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) will verify business addresses.
• The Nigerian Postal Service (NIPOST) retains responsibility for postcode administration and postal infrastructure.

States and local governments, working through the Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF) and the Association of Local Governments of Nigeria (ALGON), are expected to drive implementation at the community level. The National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), the Nigeria Data Protection Commission (NDPC), the Office of the National Security Adviser (ONSA), the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) were also named as agencies expected to contribute to the framework. NDPC’s inclusion gives the privacy dimension a statutory anchor: the commission derives its regulatory mandate from the Nigeria Data Protection Act 2023, the country’s framework law on how personal data may be processed.

Special Assistant to the President on ICT Policy Salihu Ibrahim-Dasuki said the National Addressing Policy of 2017 had become obsolete, noting that it focused narrowly on mail delivery and postcodes and contained what he described as institutional misalignments — including citizen address verification duties assigned to the National Bureau of Statistics. The revamp follows a regional precedent: Ghana launched its National Digital Property Addressing System, GhanaPostGPS, in 2017, assigning every mapped location a unique digital code.

NIMC Director-General Abisoye Coker said the initiative had earlier been slowed by a lack of coordination among agencies, but credited the vice president’s office with harmonising the parties involved.

ALGON President Bello Lawal said the addressing initiative would improve national security, deepen financial inclusion and help ensure that every Nigerian is accounted for within their local community.

The announcement did not include a rollout timeline, budget or implementation phases, and the framework was described as preliminary — leaving when and how the first verified digital addresses reach citizens and businesses as the main open questions.

Also present at the meeting were NDPC Chief Executive Vincent Olatunji, NITDA Director-General Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi, Nigeria Governors’ Forum Director-General Abdullateef Shittu, and representatives of the Fintech Association of Nigeria, among others.

Source: TechNext24