The federal government has licensed 173 centres and 30 state government institutions to conduct enrollment of all persons, including legal residents into the national identity database on behalf of the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC).
Recall that the federal government had on Tuesday ordered all telecommunication service providers to ask its subscribers to provide their national identification number (NIN) within two weeks.
Subscribers who fail to do so within the time frame are to be blocked from using their SIM cards.
The resolution was reached at a meeting between the minister of communication and digital economy, Dr Isa Pantami and stakeholders in the communication industry on Monday.
But to avoid likely confusion of everyone trooping to the few NIMC offices in the 36 states of the federation and Abuja the agency said in a notice published on its website yesterday that more organisations had been commissioned to do the registration on behalf of NIMC.
It said the approval, which was given in different categories, includes all telecoms operators and private companies, and they are expected to commence enrollment into the NIMC database.
The head of communications at NIMC, Mr. Kayode Adegoke, who confirmed the licensing of the agents, said they had been mandated to commence registration immediately.
“The minister of communications and digital economy, Isa Ali Ibrahim (Pantami), has approved the licensing of 173 agents and 30 state governments/public sector institutions to conduct enrolment of all persons including legal residents into the National Identity Database (NIDB) on behalf of the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC).
“Pursuant to the above, find the list of all the successful firms who satisfied all the evaluation criteria as stated in the advert for the expression of interest (EOI) of each of the respective categories in full.
“The Commission congratulates all those who have been cleared to conduct enrollment of all persons on behalf of NIMC for data capture services,” the notice read.
Meanwhile, all registered persons can retrieve their NIN by dialling *346# on their registered phone number for all the major networks.
Reacting to the development, the Association of Licensed Telecoms Operators of Nigeria (ALTON) said its members will comply with the directives of the NCC and the federal government.
“We wish to communicate our intention to fully comply with the two directives issued by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) in the past week, and to work closely with them to overcome this challenge, together.
“We understand that this process will be inconvenient for subscribers and we are committed to ensuring we provide the information and the support that you will need to manage this transition,” said ALTON in a statement by its chairman and spokesman, Messrs Gbenga Adebayo and Damian Udeh.
Meanwhile, the House of Representatives yesterday prayed the federal government to extend the ultimatum for SIM card registration and NIN linkage deadline by 10 weeks.
The lawmakers took the decision while adopting a motion brought under matters of urgent national importance by the minority leader, Mr. Ndudi Elumelu.
Emphasising the need for the extension, Elumelu said two weeks was too little for the over 200 million Nigerians, especially considering the Christmas period.
“As laudable as the idea behind the policy may seem, the timing is very wrong because Nigerians have not been properly sensitized, as only a few educated persons who bother to read the dailies might have heard about this instructions.
“Therefore trying to enforce this policy in a period where most Nigerians are gearing up for Christmas festivities may lead to stampede in the process of rushing to get registered which could lead to unnecessary death and injuries.
“If the NCC is allowed to carry out this directive, it will bring about untold hardship as millions of subscribers will be disconnected this yuletide period which could spell disaster in an already volatile nation like ours.
“If the NCC is not urgently called to halt their plans there may be unnecessary panic in the country, which may lead to exploitation of vulnerable Nigerian thereby causing more pains in an already pathetic situation, hence the need to urgently wade into this impending crisis,” he said.
Adopting the motion, the House urged the NCC to instead give a reasonable amount of time to enable Nigerians submit their NINs to service providers.
