The National Association of Telecommunications Subscribers (NATCOMS) has urged the Federal Government to extend the National Identification Number (NIN) integration to Subscriber Identification Module record to December 31, 2021.
The President of NATCOMS, Mr Adeolu Ogunbanjo, on Wednesday said that the one-month extension for the exercise was not enough to capture all Nigerians.
He said rather than affixing a timeline to the exercise, it should be allowed to go on till December 31, this year.
According to him, with the huge number of the people that do not have NIN, it would be difficult to achieve the NIN-SIM integration in one month.
He said, “Only 51 million linkages have been done so far, and that is on the average consumer having three SIM cards per person, meaning that about 17 million to 18 million Nigerians have actually done their NIN links.
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“We have about 120 million subscribers with about 220 million linkages to be done, we have only done 51 million at the centres, and they are very slow due to poor connectivity from network operators.
“So, we are saying extend it to December 31, to enable everybody to register and all documents such as drivers’ license and bank accounts will now be linked appropriately,” Ogunbanjo said.
Ogunbanjo, who noted that the one-month extension of the exercise would not be sufficient to capture the over 200 million subscribers in the country.
He, however, advised subscribers to link their SIMs with their NINs to avoid being sanctioned.
