NIN: Don’t punish Nigerians for your ineptitude, Telecom workers tell FG

Workers in the nation’s Communications industry under the aegis of Private Telecommunications and Communications Senior Staff Association of Nigeria, PTECSSAN, have asked the federal government not to punish Nigerians for its ineptitude over the two weeks deadline to block subscribers’ lines that failed to link up with the National Identification Number, NIN.

PTECSSAN in a statement by its President and General Secretary, Opeyemi Tomori and Okonu Abdullahi, respectively, contented that it was impossible to achieve the deadline, saying “to register about one hundred and seventy million Nigerians that are yet to be registered within two weeks is a tall order that can never be met with the present encumbrances in the present approach of registering people.”

“Rather than issuing a deadline and threats on linking up the NIN to SIMs, what we believe the government should do is to address the bottlenecks encountered by Nigerians in the process of registration which have prevented the majority of them from obtaining their NIN.

“Is the government aware that it is only about forty-three Million Nigerians that have been able to obtain NIN since its introduction over seven years ago? To expect Nigerians to register and obtain NIN in order to link it up with their SIMs within two weeks what they could not obtain for these number of years beats our imagination.

“Nigerians have suffered immensely trying to obtain the NIN to no avail. Stories told by those that have registered are not pleasant. Some were leaving their homes for the registration centers as early as 4am daily for weeks before they could register. While those that could not withstand the rigor part with monies to hasten things up for them.

“By giving two weeks to Nigerians that have not registered to do so will surely add more hardship on them. The Government is practically telling them to abandon their businesses and whatever they are doing that brings incomes for them within that long period of time.

“If and when all remaining Nigerians have been able to register and obtain their NIN they need not be bothered to link their NIN’s with their operators, the government through the National Identification Management Commission, NIMC, and Nigeria Communication Commission, NCC, should liaise with the telecoms operators to synchronize the NIN with the subscribers’ SIMs after all, the operators still rely on the NIMC to authenticate NIN provided by subscribers before they can link them up to their SIMS.

“We understand the importance of having a comprehensive database for the country and at the same time having NIN linked with SIMs we implore the government to adopt the best of approaches in putting them in place. All these can be done without necessarily causing hardship to Nigerians.”