Isa Pantami, Nigeria’s Minister of Communications and Digital Economy announced on Friday, September 16, that only about 90 million people had registered for the National Identification Number -NIN, in the country.
Pantami, who had revealed this at an event to mark the country’s fourth identity day in Abuja, stated that when he was appointed Minister in August 2019, only 40 million people had registered for the NIN.
He was quick to add, however, that the number increased to about 90 million through the help and enforcement of the process by the Federal Government.
Isa had said: “While we celebrate the achievements that Nigeria has recorded in the digital space and especially in digital identification, in the last few years under President Muhammadu Buhari, GCFR, we are, however, mindful of the gaps remaining to be filled for us to ensure that every citizen of Nigeria and every legal resident in our country is enrolled and issued the NIN.”
The federal government had back in 2020, mandated mobile telecommunication operators to block the Subscriber Identification Modules -SIMs that were not linked to NIN by December 31. But the deadline had been extended severally before the government had finally told mobile service providers to ban calls from unlinked phone lines as of April 4, 2022.
