By Nneka Nwagwugwu
Over 29 million telecom lines have not been linked to the National Identity Numbers (NIN) even as the first deadline is today.
A top federal government official told Daily Trust on Monday that about 176m SIM cards had been linked to their owners’ NINs.
The government had given January 19 and February 9 deadlines for subscribers already with NINs and those without NINs respectively to link their SIMs with their unique identity numbers.
The Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Isa Ibrahim Pantami’s spokesperson, Uwa Suleiman, did not respond to enquiries on what would be the fate of those who failed to do the linkage before the deadline.
The Nigerian Communications Commission had said there would not be mass disconnection of telecom subscribers as a result of the ongoing linkage of NIN records to SIM Registration, Igbere TV reports.
“A recent survey conducted in Nigeria has shown that on average, there are now approximately 4 to 5 SIMs to every human subscriber.
“This explains the basis of allowing the linkage of up to seven SIMs to one unique NIN in the recently launched Federal Government Portal”, NCC had said in a recent statement.