The Federal Government on Friday announced that extension of the National Identity Number (NIN) and Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) records integration deadline from April to May 6, 2021.
The Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Dr Isa Pantami, disclosed this in a meeting of the Ministerial Task Force on the NIN-SIM data linkage, held in Abuja, a statement issued by the ministry stated.
The meeting was attended by key stakeholders, including the EVC/CEO of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), DG/CEO of the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), DG/CEO of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) and Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).
Also present at the meeting were representative of the Comptroller-General of the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) and the Chairman of the Association of Licensed Telecommunications Operators of Nigeria (ALTON). Others included the NCC Executive Commissioners Technical Services and Stakeholder Management, MD/CEOs of MTN, Airtel, EMTS (9Mobile), NTEL, Spectranet and SMILE, as well as the COO of Glo.
According to the Minister, the request for the extension was presented to President Muhammadu Buhari and he endorsed it.
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It was confirmed that over 51 million people have been assigned NIN while enrolment centres acroos the country had increased to 3,800.
Pantami said, “There are many people who have enrolled and are in the process of being assigned NINs. With each individual having an average of 3 to 4 SIMs, the total number of SIMs tied to NINs would close to the total number of registered SIMs in the country. The current number of monthly enrollments has increased significantly to about 2.6 million registrations.
“There has also been a remarkable increase in the number of enrolment centres across the country with about 3,800 centres available for enrollments . There are also many more new centres in the pipeline,” said the Minister.
The minister explained the importance of obtaining feedback from all stakeholders in order to ensure that the NIN-SIM linkage process was one that could not easily be compromised.
He thanked Nigerians for their patience and compliance with the Federal Government’s directive on the NIN-SIM registration exercise, reiterating the government’s commitment to continually taking decisions aimed at easing the pains of the citizens with regard to NIN and SIM registration.
The Chairman of the EFCC who also addressed the meeting stated that the NIN-SIM linkage would support the Federal Government in checkmating the activities of fraudsters and cybercriminals.
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