Lagos State Residents Register and the LAG-ID Card
Lagos State runs its own register of residents, distinct from Nigeria's federal identity number. A state law of 27 June 2011 created the Lagos State Residents Registration Agency (LASRRA), which enrols residents biometrically, issues each a number, and later relaunched its card as the LAG-ID smart card carrying a payment wallet. Registration is free, and the agency's then general manager said in 2022 that it is required by law of every resident, though the law set no penalty and was being amended. The register gates services. LASRRA's general manager said in June 2026 that a LASRRA number is already a requirement for enrolment in Lagos public schools, and under a July 2024 agreement with the state health agency anyone who registers is captured for the Ilera Eko health insurance scheme. Enrolment totals are inconsistent. Officials gave over 6.5 million in September 2022, six million in December 2023, 6,465,667 in May 2025 and about seven million in September 2025, each cumulative since inception rather than a count of current records. Targets of 10 million by end-2022 and 13 million by mid-2023 were missed; in May 2025 the state set 10 million by 2027. In December 2023 roughly 200,000 cards were awaiting collection, and records captured before 2018 must be revalidated before a card is printed.
📊 Impact
Lagos officials have stated the register's size four times since 2022 without a consistent trend: 'over 6.5 million' (September 2022, then general manager Ibilola Kasunmu, Vanguard), 'six million... since the inception of the scheme in 2011' (December 2023, general manager Bilikiss Adebiyi-Abiola), 6,465,667 comprising 4,058,833 adults and 2,407,224 children (May 2025, Innovation, Science and Technology commissioner Olatubosun Alake, Vanguard) and 'about seven million' (September 2025, Adebiyi-Abiola, Punch). Every figure is cumulative since inception, not a count of active or validated records. In September 2022 more than one million registrants had completed validation. Card issuance trails the register: roughly 200,000 LAG-ID cards were awaiting collection in December 2023, and the agency said records entered before 2018 must be refreshed before printing. Stated targets of 10 million residents by end-2022 and 13 million by mid-2023 were not met; the target stated in May 2025 is 10 million by 2027. No independent evaluation of the register, and no data-protection compliance review under Nigeria's Data Protection Act 2023, was located.
🎓 Lesson
A register's headline is its cumulative enrolment; its usefulness is the share of records that are current. Lagos has captured six to seven million people since 2011, but about 200,000 cards sat uncollected in December 2023 and anything registered before 2018 must be revalidated before a card can be printed.
Sources
📎 Cite this project
1001 Smart Cities (2026). “Lagos State Residents Register and the LAG-ID Card” — Lagos, Nigeria. The Smart City Atlas. https://1001smartcities.org/projects/lagos-residents-register/ (last verified 2026-07-26). Data: CC BY 4.0.
The underlying data is free to reuse with attribution — see the open data page.
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