By Abdulrahman Abdullahi
National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) has given telecommunications companies powers to register people who do not have National Identity Numbers.
The Director-General, NIMC, Aliyu Aziz, said telcos and some other private and public organisations had also been licensed by the commission to provide NINs in order to address the crowds at commission’s offices.
“We have licensed private and public sector organisations including telcos (telecommunications companies) so as to create more centres,” he stated in a WhatsApp message to our correspondent.
Recall that the Federal government had on December 15, 2020, declared that after December 30, 2020, all SIMs that were not registered with valid NINs on the network of telecommunications companies would be blocked.
It later extended the December 30, 2020 deadline following widespread opposition against the earlier announcement and gave three weeks’ extension for subscribers with NIN from December 30, 2020 to January 19, 2021.
It also gave six weeks’ extension for subscribers without NIN from December 30, 2020 to February 9, 2021, but many organisations had called for further deadline extension or outright suspension of the NIN registration process due to the large crowds who had yet to have their NINs.
