The Federal Government yesterday warned telephone subscribers to protect their Subscriber Identification Modules, (SIMs) and their National Identity Numbers, (NINs), as it would now use the NIN to trace people for either good or bad reasons.
t also announced that a total of 47.8 million NINs had been collected by the mobile operators, as it expressed the hope that more NINs would be collected before the February 9, 2021 deadline.
Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Dr. Isa Pantami, gave the warning in a statement issued in Abuja by the Director Public Affairs, Nigerian Communications Commission,(NCC), Ikechukwu Adinde. He reminded Nigerians to secure and protect their NINs, urging subscribers to desist from selling their NINs or allowing others to use their NINs for registration.
“For any action committed with the SIM, good or bad, it will be officially traced and attached to the NIN owner,” the minister warned.
The statement further stated that at the end of a review meeting on January 18, 2021, the Technical Implementation Committee under the Ministerial Task Force reported significant progress in the on-going NIN-SIM linkage exercise.
Recall that 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 a 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 had called for further deadline extension or outright suspension of the NIN registration process due to the large crowds who are yet to have their NINs.
