The Nigerian government today announced that the ongoing National Identification Number (NIN) and Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) integration exercise has been extended by eight weeks, with a new deadline of 6 April 2021.

The country’s National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) issued a statement confirming the decision reached following a meeting of the Ministerial Taskforce on NIN-SIM registration convened by Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Dr. Isa Ali Ibrahim Pantami.

According to officials, since the exercise began, MNOs have collected a total of 56.18 million NINs.

“Each NIN is usually tied to an average of 3 to 4 SIMs and this infers that the current figure accounts for a significant portion of the existing SIMs. This number of NINs collected represents a significant increase when compared with the 47.8 million reported by the Technical Committee on January 18, 2021,” NIMC stated.

The Commission also revealed that more than 1060 registration centres for NIN have been activated.

The government said the rationale behind the exercise is to enhance security and make the process of obtaining NINs easier for Nigerians. However, subscribers have slammed authorities for introducing the process during the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic and forcing people to physically register at NIMC offices.

According to the Nigeria Communication Commission (NCC), Nigeria recorded 208 million active telephone subscriptions at the end of November 2020 and a teledensity of about 109%.

Mobile operators have been actively informing their subscribers to comply with the NIN-SIM integration directive of the government.

MTN remains the market leader with over 82 million subscribers and controlling nearly 40% of the market.