The Federal Government, through the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security, in collaboration with the National Identity Management Commission, has unveiled a National Identity Number-enabled farmer registry and Government-to-People card initiative.
This project aims to address the challenges of identity and authentication, ensuring efficient and accurate delivery of government agricultural services.
In a joint statement issued on Thursday, Director of Information at FMAFS, Dr Joel Oruche, and Head of Corporate Communications at NIMC, Dr Kayode Adegoke, outlined the benefits of the initiative.
They explained that the farmer registry would link each farmer’s NIN to their farmland and relevant data, including crop or livestock type and farm size.
The G2P card ecosystem is designed to issue NIN-enabled cards to Nigerians and legal residents, whether banked or unbanked. It features biometric verification, multiple wallets for transactions, and offline capabilities, ensuring accessibility even in remote locations.
Each card is personalised for use by MDAs and supports programmes such as subsidies, loans, welfare payments, and more.
According to the statement, this initiative will allow FMAFS to administer its programmes independently while providing real-time monitoring and tracking via digital dashboards.
The agencies reiterated that the G2P card will enhance transparency, scalability, and efficiency in the agriculture sector, helping the government deliver better-targeted services to farmers.
By enabling unique farmer identification and reducing the risk of fraud, the project is expected to revolutionise the delivery of agricultural benefits, fostering inclusivity and food security across Nigeria.
”By adopting this card, FMAFS can uniquely identify all farmers, provide multiple agricultural services through the card in a manner that eliminates risks and fraud, and also provide end-to-end visibility within the agricultural value chain, thus enabling scalability.
“Agriculture services to be provided through the card include farmer financing, input distribution, farmland mapping linked to identity, extension services monitoring and evaluation, and agency banking, as well as multiple types of third-party services.”
NIMC’s role in providing a secure biometric identity system ensures that all benefits are accurately linked to individual farmers.
The statement emphasized that the G2P ecosystem will allow the Ministry to independently administer its programmes while using digital dashboards to track implementation and performance.
“NIMC’s role is to provide the ecosystem with foundational biometric identity in the NIN to ensure that the card and its attendant benefits are linked securely and accurately to the beneficiary and the beneficiary only. FMAFS retains their statutory rights and ownership of the data generated.
“With the G2P ecosystem, any programme implemented by the Ministry can now be administered independently and showcased through digitally enabled dashboards displaying key data on how each programme has been efficiently implemented or otherwise.”