The federal government has again bowed to pressure by extendeding the deadline for the ongoing exercise of linking national identification number (NIN) to SIM cards.
The extension followed a virtual meeting of the ministerial task force on NIN-SIM linkage.
The meeting, the 2nd high-level meeting of the ministerial task force, was held on Monday, and it was presided over by the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Dr Isa Ali Pantami.
The high-level meeting reviewed the progress report of the ongoing NIN-SIM linkage exercise, following which, the deadline for linkage was extended to 6th of April 2021.
All members of the taskforce were present at the meeting, and they included the CEOs of NIMC, NCC, and NITDA, CEOs of all mobile network operators in Nigeria, Chairman of ALTON, CEOs of Spectranet, Smile, and deputy MD, Intercellular.
Recall that the FG had on December 15, 2020 declared that all SIM cards that were not registered with valid NIN on the network of telecommunications companies would be blocked after December 30, 2020.
However, following public outcry against the short notice, the FG later extended the deadline, giving 3 weeks’ extension for subscribers with NIN from December 30, 2020, to January 19, 2021, and a 6-week extension for subscribers without NIN from December 30, 2020, to February 9, 2021.
Meanwhile, the FG did not carry out its threat of blocking SIM cards of subscribers with NIN on January 19. The FG unified the deadline, postponing the deadline to February 9 altogether.
The new deadline for linking NIN to SIM cards is now April 6, 2021.
