The Federal Government has commenced efforts to digitise Nigeria’s cooperative sector as part of plans to improve access to finance, strengthen regulation and position cooperatives to play a bigger role in national economic development.
The initiative is being implemented under the Renewed Hope Cooperative Reform and Revamp Programme 2030 and will introduce a digital system for registering, identifying and monitoring cooperative societies and their members across the country.
The Minister of State for Agriculture and Food Security and Supervising Minister for Cooperative Affairs, Sen. Aliyu Abdullahi, disclosed this in Abuja at the National Technical Workshop on Cooperative Sector Digitalisation.
Abdullahi said the exercise marked a shift from policy discussions to actual implementation, stressing that a functional digital system was necessary to connect cooperatives with financial institutions, markets, government interventions and other economic opportunities.
At the centre of the initiative is the National Cooperative Smart Registry, which will provide a central platform for registering and verifying cooperative societies as well as improving access to information about their operations.
The minister said the registry would also facilitate the introduction of the Cooperative Verification Number for cooperative organisations and the Cooperative Member Identification Number for individual members.
He explained that the identification systems would provide a reliable basis for establishing the identity and credibility of cooperatives and their members.
According to him, the availability of verified information would be particularly important to the planned Cooperative Bank of Nigeria, as the proposed institution would require credible data to assess members, manage credit, monitor risks and support share subscriptions.
Abdullahi said the digitalisation effort was part of a broader government plan to address weaknesses that have limited the growth of Nigeria’s cooperative movement.
He listed the challenges to include weak governance, regulatory gaps, limited access to finance, inadequate institutional capacity, poor market access, weak data systems and insufficient partnerships.
He said the government was determined to create a cooperative ecosystem that was more transparent, inclusive and accountable and capable of supporting food security, financial inclusion, employment and shared prosperity.
The minister also stressed the need for stronger cooperation between the Federal Government and state authorities, noting that cooperative affairs fall under the concurrent legislative framework.
He called on the Federal Department of Cooperatives, state directors of cooperatives, the Cooperative Federation of Nigeria and other stakeholders to take ownership of the implementation process.
Earlier, the Permanent Secretary in the ministry, Dr Marcus Ogunbiyi, said the digitalisation programme represented an important milestone in efforts to modernise the cooperative sector.
Ogunbiyi said cooperatives remained important to food security, rural economic development and grassroots empowerment, making it necessary to move away from largely manual systems to a secure and integrated digital platform.
He said the new infrastructure would also improve the delivery of government interventions by ensuring that subsidies, credit and other forms of support reach verified cooperatives and their members.
According to him, the Smart Registry and Cooperative Verification Number would serve as key tools for delivering assistance under programmes such as the World Bank supported AGROW project.
The government expects the digital framework to provide better data for policymaking, improve accountability and create a stronger foundation for integrating cooperatives into the country’s financial and economic system.
