The National Addressing Council ratifies a digital addressing system connecting NIMC, CAC, and NIPOST databases to improve planning, security, and financial inclusion.
The Federal Government has ratified a national addressing framework designed to link verified physical addresses directly to citizens’ digital identities to strengthen national planning, security, financial inclusion, and emergency response operations.
The resolution was adopted during a National Addressing Council meeting in Abuja presided over by Vice President Kashim Shettima, bringing together key federal ministries, regulatory commissions, security agencies, state governments, and private-sector operators.
Under the approved framework, the Federal Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation will operate as the council secretariat, coordinating technical implementation, system interoperability, and nationwide standards across participating institutions.
Inter-Agency Architecture and Statutory Responsibilities
The digital infrastructure distributes specific verification and data-management functions across regulatory and security organs.
The National Identity Management Commission bears the statutory responsibility for verifying and authenticating individual citizen addresses against the National Identification Number database.
The Corporate Affairs Commission will oversee the verification of corporate and registered enterprise addresses, ensuring business registries match physical operational locations nationwide.
The Nigerian Postal Service retains statutory jurisdiction over national postcode administration and physical postal infrastructure, providing the geographic foundation for digital address tagging.
Sub-national implementation will be driven across community levels through the Nigeria Governors’ Forum and the Association of Local Governments of Nigeria.
Broader regulatory oversight, security alignment, and fiscal coordination incorporate mandates from the National Information Technology Development Agency, the Nigeria Data Protection Commission, the Central Bank of Nigeria, the Nigerian Communications Commission, and the Office of the National Security Adviser.
Overhaul of the National Addressing Policy 2017
The approved model replaces the National Addressing Policy 2017, which federal officials determined was inadequate for modern digital governance.
Special Assistant to the President on ICT Policy, Salihu Ibrahim-Dasuki, noted that the 2017 framework focused almost entirely on physical mail logistics, postcodes, and postal networks, while assigning citizen verification tasks to the National Bureau of Statistics.
The previous policy lacked mechanisms for verifying corporate business addresses and possessed structural bottlenecks that failed to reflect constitutional and technological evolutions in digital public infrastructure.
NIMC Director-General Abisoye Coker stated that institutional silos and a historic lack of inter-agency coordination had previously stalled national addressing reforms.
Economic and National Security Implications
Minister of Interior Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo indicated that the verified addressing architecture forms a pillar of economic restructuring that will directly enhance investor confidence.
Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation Kingsley Tochukwu Udeh stated that the framework replaces years of fragmented crisis management with a coordinated, standardized digital proof-of-address system.
Vice President Shettima emphasized that linking verified identities with physical addresses provides the foundation required to deploy targeted social interventions, optimize emergency response logistics, and expand access to credit while enforcing data privacy standards under the Nigeria Data Protection Commission.
