President Muhammadu Buhari has yesterday directed that no subscriber should be blocked by any telecom operation for failure to meet the National Identity Number (NIN) registration dateline until 9th February 2021.
Earlier, January 19th 2021 was the dateline issued by the federal government for all telecom subscribers to link all SIM cards to the NIN or block those who could not comply.
However, considering the numbers of the registration centres, it was not feasible to meet up with the dateline after several appeals by Nigerians for the date to be extended.
Recall on December 15, 2020, Federal Government directed that all SIM cards of the telecom subscribers in Nigeria must be linked to their NIN on or before 30th Dec, of the same year otherwise, it shall all be blocked. The Federal Government later extend the dateline to January 19, 2021, after agitation by Nigerians that the dateline was not possible to meet considering the few registration centres and the difficulty in accessing them.
President Buhari after the expiration of the Jan, 19 dateline has yesterday approved another extension to 9th February for the registration.
At the expiration of the Jan 19 dateline, Nigerians were panicking considering the stance of the Minister of Communication and Digital Technology, Isa Pantami on insisting that there was no going back on the dateline, that those who failed shall get their SIM blocked.
Fortunately, President Buhari yielded to the yearnings of Nigerians and directed that the blockage of the SIM cards by the telecom operators should be extended to February 9th, 2021
Buhari’s statement through the Minister of Communication yesterday assigned by, Engr. Charles Adebayo, Chairman ALTON, and the Publicity Secretary, Damian Udeh said; “ALTON can confirm to our members that we have received formal confirmation from the Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC that President Muhammadu Buhari has graciously approved the extension of the deadline for subscribers with NIN to link it to their SIM registration data from 19th January to 9th February 2021.
“We thank the President for giving us more time to deliver on this all-important assignment of creating a credible national identity database for the country. We are also grateful to the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Dr Isa Ibrahim Ali Pantami, for his commitment to enabling digital economy”.
Accordingly, ALTON had urged their subscribers to use the opportunity provided by the Federal Government to ensure they get captured at the various registration centres to avoid their SIM cards from getting blocked.
Meanwhile, subscribers who were lagging behind applauded President Buhari for extending the time to Feb 9th to give them room for the registration through the registration centres are still overcrowded.
