TUE AUG 25 2026-theGBJournal| Nigeria has taken a step towards replacing its fragmented addressing infrastructure with a digitised national system designed to make it easier to identify, locate and verify people, homes and businesses.
The National Addressing Council, chaired by Vice-President Kashim Shettima, ratified a preliminary framework on Monday for developing a modern digital addressing system, bringing together government agencies and private-sector stakeholders.
Under the framework, the Federal Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation will serve as the council’s secretariat, with other agencies expected to coordinate their efforts towards implementation.
Shettima said the initiative was part of the government’s broader effort to build institutions and infrastructure that reflect the changing patterns of movement, commerce and economic activity under President Bola Tinubu’s Renewed Hope agenda.
”We must build a system that locate every community, support enterprise without barriers and strengthen government without compromising privacy.
Our objective should be simple. for Nigerians to understand, wherever a citizen lives, wherever a business operates, wherever help is required, Nigeria should find the address. This is the standard before us and I am confident that the council will deliver,” Senator Shettima noted while addressing the council.
The VP explained that the task before Council is to build a national addressing system worthy of the scale and ambition of the nation, just as he maintained that the addressing system must serve the village as effectively as the metropolis.
“A country that cannot consistently locate its people and businesses carries an avoidable weakness into planning, commerce, security and social protection.”
On the mandate of members of the council, the Vice President said that the ambition requires institutional discipline, just as he appointed the Federal Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation to serve as secretariat of the NAC.
The Federal Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation is to serve as secretariat of the council. It must guide technical implementation, systems integration, interoperability and standards.
NIMC, the VP said, has an essential responsibility in addressing individual verification and authentication, while CAC must support verification of business addresses. NIPOST remains indispensable for postcode administration and postal infrastructure.
Explainer
What is a modern addressing system?
A modern addressing system goes beyond simply giving streets and buildings names and numbers. It creates a standardised digital identity for physical locations, allowing a particular home, office, shop, farm or facility to be accurately identified and found.
Such a system typically combines geographic coordinates, unique address codes, digital maps and databases. An address could therefore be verified digitally and linked to services such as postal delivery, emergency response, logistics, banking, property registration, taxation and public planning.
The potential economic benefit is significant. A reliable address system could make it easier for businesses to deliver goods, for emergency services to locate people quickly and for governments to plan infrastructure and collect revenue.
It could also strengthen the country’s digital economy by providing a dependable location layer for services that currently rely on incomplete or inconsistent addresses.
The challenge, however, will be implementation. Nigeria already has multiple addressing initiatives and databases across federal, state and local institutions. The success of the new framework will depend on how effectively those systems are integrated, updated and made interoperable rather than creating another parallel database.
The council’s decision therefore represents the beginning of a potentially important piece of national infrastructure: a common digital language for identifying where Nigerians live, work and do business.
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