Telecom operators have submitted about 43 million National Identity Number (NIN) to the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) for verification, in order to have them registered with their respective Subscriber Identification Modules (SIMs).
21st Century Chronicle reports that the National Communications Commission (NCC) had fixed January 19, 2021 as the deadline for the integration of NIN with SIM.
Chairman of the Association of Licensed Telecommunications Operators of Nigeria (ALTON), Gbenga Adebayo said that the NINs has been sent to NIMC for verification in order to ensure that the numbers were harmonized with their respective SIMs.
“I don’t have the number of SIM cards that have been linked but at the last count, NIMC told us that they have about 43 million Nigerians who have NINs. So, we will be safe to assume that a large percentage of these citizens have delivered their NINs to the operators by way of calling the USSD access code and/or visiting the operators’ websites and uploading their NINs on the websites.
“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? How many of them have been verified? That is not in our control, but as an industry, the large numbers we received from subscribers have since been delivered to NIMC,” he was quoted by the media to have said.
