The Federal Government has announced a further extension of the deadline for linking the National Identity Number( NIN) to the Subscriber Identity Module (SIM).
The new deadline is May 6,2021
This was made known on Friday, in a statement jointly signed by the Director of Public Affairs of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Dr Ikechukwu Adinde, and the Head of Corporate Communications at the National Identity Management Commission NIMC), Mr Kayode Adegoke.
The statement said an approval to extend the period of the NIN- SIM linkage to May 6 was given at a meeting on Thursday in Abuja of the Ministerial Task Force on NIN-SIM data linkage chaired by the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Dr Isa Patami .
It said a request for extension was presented to President Muhammadu Buhari and he endorsed it.
The statement added that the extension was neccessary to accommodate many people who have enrolled in NIN but are yet to be assigned National Identity Numbers.
” With each individual having an average of three to four SIMs, the total number of SIMs tied to NINs would close to the total number of registered SIMs in the country. The current number of monthly enrolments has increased significantly to about 2.6 million registrations..
” There has also been a remarkable increase in the number of enrollment centres across the country with about 3000 centres available for enrolments. There are also many more new centres in the pipeline” it said.
