The federal government’s deadline requiring subscribers who already have National Identity Numbers (NIN) to link their data with their SIM cards expires today, January 19.
According to Daily Trust, the deadline comes amid reports that 29 million telecom users are yet to link their NIN to their SIMs. The federal government had earlier warned that subscribers with NIN who fail to abide by the directive will be disconnected.
However, Uwa Suleiman, a spokesperson to the minister of communications and digital economy, did not respond to Daily Trust’s enquiry seeking to know what would be the fate of those who failed to do the linkage before the deadline.
The other deadline mandating subscribers without NIN to obtain their numbers and link them to their SIMs falls on February 9, 2021. Meanwhile, more uncertainty continues to trail the ongoing NIN registration after a group, the African Centre for Justice and Human Rights (ACJHR), asked the federal government to stop the exercise.
ACJHR in a statement in Abuja said the registration being carried out by the Nigerian Identity Management Commission (NIMC) exposes Nigerians to the risks of contracting COVID-19, The Sun reported.
The executive director of the forum, Nduka-Edede Chinwendu, advised the government to take into consideration the daily increase of COVID-19 cases being recorded in Nigeria.
