Telcos submit 43 million NINs to NIMC for verification

About 43 million National Identity Numbers have been submitted by telecommunication companies to the National Identity Management Commission for verification in order to have them registered with their respective Subscriber Identification Modules.

Also, as the deadline for telephone subscribers with NINs to register their SIMs with the identity numbers elapsed today (January 19, 2021), operators have said that SIMs with unlinked submitted NINs would not be blocked

It was also gathered that since the announcement for the deadline was made, the NIMC had been able to provide about 45 million NINs, as it was able to register about two million people in the last one month after the Federal Government ordered citizens to register their SIMs with valid NINs.

Sources at the commission confirmed this to our correspondent, as they noted that the crowds that greeted the agency after the government’s directive had been overwhelming.

On December 15, 2020, the Federal Government declared that after December 30, 2020, all SIMs that were not registered with valid NINs on the network of telecommunications companies would be blocked.

It later extended the December 30, 2020 deadline following widespread opposition against the earlier announcement and gave three weeks’ extension for subscribers with NIN from December 30, 2020 to January 19, 2021.

It also gave six weeks’ extension for subscribers without NIN from December 30, 2020 to February 9, 2021, but many organisations have called for further deadline extension or outright suspension of the NIN registration process due to the large crowds who had yet to have their NINs.

Speaking on behalf of the firms, the Chairman, Association of Licensed Telecommunications Operators of Nigeria, Gbenga Adebayo, said the NINs were sent to NIMC for verification in order to ensure that the numbers were harmonised with their respective SIMs.

He added, “And by extension I will be right to say that operators have delivered those NINs to NIMC. Now the second part of it, which is not in our control, is how many of these numbers uploaded by the operators and forwarded to NIMC have been harmonised?