ABUJA, Nigeria — The Federal Government has revived Nigeria’s long-delayed digital postcode project, nearly 20 years after it was first conceived, and has begun integrating it with the National Identification Number (NIN) to improve digital identity, address verification and access to public services, the National Identity Management Commission and Nigerian Postal Service have announced.
The initiative was formalised on Friday with the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between the National Identity Management Commission and the Nigerian Postal Service in Abuja.
The agreement, signed by NIMC Director-General Abisoye Coker-Odusote and Postmaster General of NIPOST, Tola Odeyemi, integrates NIPOST into Nigeria’s digital identity ecosystem and expands access to identity services nationwide.
Speaking at the event, Coker-Odusote said both agencies had already begun integrating postcode retrieval into the NIN platform, allowing Nigerians to verify their addresses and access their digital postcodes through a single platform.
“Our teams have collaborated to integrate postcode retrieval into the NIN platform, so that Nigerians will soon be able to confirm their address and retrieve their postcode through one trusted platform. This is designed to make access faster and more convenient for all Nigerians,” she said.
Coker-Odusote explained that while the NIN establishes an individual’s identity, the digital postcode system identifies their location, describing the integration as a major step toward strengthening governance and digital transformation.
According to her, linking verified identities with verified addresses would improve access to government services, healthcare, financial services, education, logistics, e-commerce and emergency response, while enhancing transparency and service delivery.
The NIMC boss announced that NIPOST had been licensed as a front-end enrolment partner for NIMC, enabling Nigerians to register for their NIN at post offices across the country.
“The Postmaster General and I sat down a couple of months ago, and what we did was to give them an enrolment licence to make them a front-end partner. Nigerians who want to go to post offices can enrol there, and they will capture their details on our behalf,” she said.
Describing the integration as transformative, Coker-Odusote said the collaboration would create a national database containing verified identities linked to verified addresses and locations.
“Now you have the verified identities of individuals with verified addresses and verified locations. We are making sure that there’s accuracy when it comes to address verification, which will then make life easier for financial institutions, private sector companies and government agencies trying to confirm the address of an individual in this country,” she said.
The NIMC Director-General also said the partnership would support Nigeria’s digital public infrastructure by linking identity, payments and data exchange, creating multiple use cases for the country’s digital economy.
In her remarks, Odeyemi described the digital postcode system as a solution to Nigeria’s longstanding addressing challenges, explaining that every addressable building in the country would receive a unique, GIS-enabled, machine-readable digital address.
“What we’re building actually gives a unique identifier to every single standing structure in Nigeria. We’re giving a unique GIS-enabled, machine-readable location identifier to every standing building in the Federal Republic of Nigeria,” she said.
She explained that the initiative would effectively leapfrog traditional addressing systems and improve logistics, emergency response, planning and access to public services.
“Every modern economy depends on two critical capabilities: knowing who people are and knowing where they are. Identity gives people access; the postcode that we’re building gives service direction,” she said.
Odeyemi disclosed that although the digital postcode initiative was first proposed in 2006, it had received full Federal Government funding for the first time under the Tinubu administration.
“This project started in 2006. Across administrations, this is the first time it has been fully funded by the Federal Government because Mr President understands how foundational identity and location are to national development,” she said.
The project is expected to be rolled out in phases, with the first set of locations scheduled to be released in October 2026, according to the Minister of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy, Bosun Tijani.
The Federal Government said the initiative will address long-standing challenges associated with inaccurate and fraudulent addresses by replacing the traditional postcode system with a modern Geographic Information System-enabled alphanumeric addressing model that assigns a unique digital address to every building across the country.
