THE Nigerian government has extended the deadline for the National Identification Number-Subscriber Identity Module (NIN-SIM) linkage to July 26.
This was announced on Tuesday in a statement jointly signed by the Director of Public Affairs of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) Ikechukwu Adinde and Head of Corporate Communications of the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) Kayode Adegoke.
The statement said the decision to extend the deadline followed a request by stakeholders on the need to consolidate the enrollment and NIN-SIM verification process after an increase in enrollment systems across the country.
“As of June 28, 2021, a total of 5,410 enrollment systems are now available across the country and this would significantly ease the NIN enrolment process and subsequent linkage of NIN to SIM.
“It is worthy to note that there were only about 800 of such enrollment systems as at December 2020,” the statement added.
The Nigerian government also said that currently, there were 57.3 million unique NIN enrollments, with an average of three to four SIMs per NIN.
The statement further disclosed that the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy Isa Pantami commended Nigerians for complying with the government’s directive on the NIN-SIM linkage.
Also, the Executive Vice Chairman of the NCC Umar Danbatta and the Director-General of NIMC Aliyu Aziz urged Nigerians and legal residents in the country to take advantage of the opportunity provided by the extension to complete the enrolment and verification process.
The ICIR had reported that the deadline for the NIN-SIM linkage was initially fixed for April 6 but was later extended to May 4 and then moved to June 30.
Lukman Abolade is an Investigative reporter with The ICIR. Reach out to him via [email protected], on twitter @AboladeLAA and FB @Correction94