The Director-General of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Kashifu Inuwa, has described digital identity as the trust layer of Nigeria’s digital economy, warning that the country must now move from simply registering identities to turning them into usable digital infrastructure.
Inuwa spoke at a high-level panel, “Identity in Action and Access to the Digital Economy,” convened by the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) during discussions on “The Digital Public Ecosystem: Identity, Trust & Inclusive Access” at the 81st United Nations General Assembly (UNGA81).
He joined Senator Ibrahim Hassan Hadejia, Deputy Chief of Staff to the President; Aderemi Adebowale, National Coordinator of the Renewed Hope National Home-Grown School Feeding Programme; and Olugbenga Agboola, Co-founder and CEO of Flutterwave, at the session moderated by Diwura Oladepo, Executive Director of Technology for Social Change and Development (Tech4Dev).
Inuwa said digital identity should not be viewed merely as a card or identification number, but as foundational infrastructure that allows citizens, businesses and government to interact securely across the digital economy.
“Digital identity is the trust layer of the digital economy.”
According to him, a trusted and interoperable identity infrastructure would allow authorised innovators and service providers to build services on common foundational systems instead of repeatedly creating fragmented identity and verification platforms.
The approach, he said, could accelerate customer onboarding, reduce verification costs and expand secure digital services across fintech, healthcare, education, agriculture, insurance and government services.
Inuwa illustrated the potential with the example of a farmer who uses a National Identification Number (NIN) to establish identity, verifies eligibility for an agricultural programme, receives financial support through a payment platform and interacts with government systems through trusted data exchange.
Such interoperability, he said, would eliminate the need for citizens to repeatedly submit the same information to different institutions.
The NITDA chief said Nigeria’s next major challenge is therefore to convert the growing scale of digital identity registration into real-world utility.
“Digital identity is not the destination; it is the doorway,” he said.
The objective, Inuwa stressed, is to build a secure and interoperable digital ecosystem in which Nigerians, regardless of location or economic status, can access essential services and participate safely in the digital economy.
The position aligns with NITDA’s broader digital-trust agenda. The agency has previously identified secure digital infrastructure, interoperability and digital trust as critical components of Nigeria’s digital transformation.
For Nigeria, the emerging challenge is no longer simply how to identify citizens, but how to make trusted identity infrastructure work across the services Nigerians use every day.