As part of measures to help reduce the large crowd that besieges NIMC offices across the country, telecommunication firms, including MTN, Glo and Airtel have been licensed by the Nigerian Identity Management Commission (NIMC) to register applicants who do not have National Identity Numbers (NIN).
The Director-General, NIMC, Aliyu Aziz, who disclosed this in a report said the decision is aimed at making the process seamless and also avoid risk of contracting the COVID-19 disease because of the crowd.
Aziz pointed out that mobile network operators had been empowered to also give identity numbers. This is in addition to the licensing of the private and public organization by the commission to provide NIN.
The NIMC boss said, “We have licensed private and public sector organizations including telcos (telecommunications companies) so as to create more centres.’’
It can be recalled that the Federal Government had directed that telecommunication companies should block from their network any SIM that is not registered with valid NINs with effect from December 30, 2020.
However, following public outcry, the government gave 6 weeks extension to subscribers without NIN from December 30, 2020, to February 9, 2021, and 3 weeks extension for subscribers with NIN from December 30, 2020, to January 19, 2020.
However, many Nigerians and organisations had called for a further deadline extension or outright suspension of the NIN registration process due to the large crowds who had yet to have their NINs.