Federal Government Extends Deadline For NIN-SIM Linkage By Eight Weeks

The Federal Government on Tuesday extended the ongoing National Identification Number (NIN) and Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) integration exercis by eight weeks, with a new deadline of April 6, 2021.

KanyiDaily recalls that the FG had previously extended the deadline from January 16th to February 9th, for all telecoms subscribers that have registered for NIN including those that were yet to register for NIN to submit their NIN for linkage with their SIM card.

Despite the extension many Nigerians are yet to complete the exercise, leading to many organisations calling for further deadline extension or outright suspension of the NIN registration process.

A new deadline, which is now April 16, 2021, has now been conveyed by the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Dr. Isa Ali Ibrahim Pantami, during the meeting of the Ministerial Taskforce on NIN-SIM registration which held on February 1, 2021.

A statement issued Tuesday by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) and signed by its Director for Public Affairs, Dr. Ikechukwu Adinde, stated that “the 8-weeks extension is to give Nigerians and legal residents more time to integrate their NIN with the SIM.”

According to the statement, a total of 56.18 million NINs have been collected by the mobile network operators.

Each NIN is usually tied to an average of 3 to 4 SIMs and this infers that the current figure accounts for a significant portion of the existing SIMs.

The number of NINs collected represents a significant increase when compared with the 47.8 million reported by the technical committee on January 18, 2021.

KanyiDaily had reported that there are ongoing deliberations on whether to make NIN enrolment compulsory for the voter’s card registration in the country.