The Federal Government has commenced the digital transformation of Nigeria’s cooperative sector as part of efforts to improve smallholder farmers’ access to capital, agricultural inputs, markets and other economic opportunities.
The Minister of State for Agriculture and Food Security and Supervising Minister for Cooperative Affairs, Sen. Dr. Aliyu Sabi Abdullahi, disclosed this on Tuesday in Abuja at the National Technical Workshop on Cooperative Sector Digitalisation under the Renewed Hope Cooperative Reform and Revamp Programme (RH-CRRP 2030).
Abdullahi said the digitalisation of cooperatives would strengthen the capacity of farmer groups to access finance and government interventions, while providing the data needed to drive more effective agricultural planning and investment.
He said Nigeria could not fully realise the economic potential of its cooperative movement without addressing challenges relating to access to finance, market access, institutional capacity, inclusion, partnerships and reliable data.
According to him, cooperatives have a significant role to play in advancing food security, job creation and shared prosperity, but their contribution could be constrained without a modern system for identifying and verifying cooperative organisations and their members.
“We cannot effectively finance what we cannot identify. We cannot properly regulate what we cannot see. We cannot build trust around institutions whose identities and records cannot be reliably verified,” he said.
The minister said the digitalisation initiative would be anchored on the National Cooperative Smart Registry (NCSR), which would provide infrastructure for cooperative registration, verification, search and digital administration.
He said the system would generate a Cooperative Verification Number (CVN) for cooperative organisations and a Cooperative Member Identification Number (CoopID) for individual members.
Abdullahi said the new digital identity system would improve the ability of financial institutions, government agencies and development partners to identify legitimate cooperatives and assess their needs.
He added that the initiative was directly connected to the proposed Cooperative Bank of Nigeria (CoopBank), as the NCSR, CVN and CoopID would provide the verified data and identity infrastructure required for credit profiling and risk management.
The minister said the digitalisation programme would also help connect cooperatives to finance, markets, government interventions and other economic opportunities.
He disclosed that the government had already begun mobilising cooperative stakeholders across the country as part of preparations for the establishment of the proposed bank.
According to him, the ministerial advocacy tour on cooperative bank share capital mobilisation and sector digitalisation has covered the South-West, North-West and South-South geopolitical zones, with engagements held in Lagos, Kaduna and Bayelsa.
He said the North-Central, South-East and North-East would be covered before the planned launch of the CoopBank share-subscription programme by the end of October 2026.
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Abdullahi said the planned bank would be government-enabled, cooperatively owned and controlled, but professionally managed, adding that its success would require credible identities, reliable data and a transparent ecosystem.
He urged state directors of cooperatives to ensure that the digital platform works effectively across the federation, stressing that the Federal Government could not transform the sector from Abuja alone.
The minister said the digitalisation effort was expected to move cooperatives away from manual processes and create a more transparent system that could support policy, planning and economic interventions.
The Permanent Secretary of the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security said the reform would help modernise the cooperative sector, boost financial inclusion, eliminate fraudulent actors and unlock capital for smallholder producers and cooperatives across the country.
He said the strategic importance of cooperatives to national food security, rural economic stabilisation and grassroots empowerment could not be overemphasised.
The Permanent Secretary said the transition from analogue operations to an integrated digital architecture would strengthen the confidence of credit providers and international development partners in Nigeria’s cooperative sector.
He said the digital infrastructure being developed would also play a key role in the implementation of the World Bank-assisted Project AGROW.
According to him, the Cooperative Verification Number and National Cooperative Smart Registry would serve as a primary mechanism for delivering input subsidies, credit interventions and technical assistance directly to verified cooperators under the programme.
The Permanent Secretary said the partnership between the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security, the Cooperative Federation of Nigeria (CFN) and Seamfix Limited would establish the technical foundation for the digital transformation.
He noted that the National Cooperative Smart Registry would streamline registration and administrative processes, while the CVN and CoopID would establish unique identities for cooperative societies and individual members.
He said the system would curb duplication, improve authenticity and create greater institutional trust among financial institutions, donors and other partners seeking to support cooperatives.
The Permanent Secretary urged state directors and cooperative leaders to embrace the digital tools and ensure their rapid adoption, saying the success of the reform would depend significantly on implementation at state and grassroots levels.
The government’s initiative comes as Nigeria seeks to strengthen cooperatives as vehicles for aggregating smallholder farmers, improving access to finance and inputs, expanding market participation and delivering agricultural interventions more efficiently.
The digital identification and data infrastructure could also provide lenders and development partners with better visibility of farmer groups, potentially reducing information gaps that have historically limited financing to smallholder producers.
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