Although Nigeria’s NIN enrolments are now said to have reached 71 million, the country’s government evidently feels not enough Nigerians have linked their National Identification Number (NIN) to their Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) and has approved a further extension of the deadline for the exercise to 31 March this year.
The country’s National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) has issued over 71 million NINs as of 30 December 2021, with more than 14,000 enrolment centres set up across the country. It is estimated that three or four SIMs are linked to each NIN.
However, local press reports quote government sources as saying that the extension will help the government to consolidate the gains of the process and accelerate the enrolment of Nigerians in key areas like remote schools, hospitals and worship centres, and the registration of legal residents.
Nigerians outside the country are also being targeted. In fact NIMC has also set up enrolment centres in over 31 countries to cater for Nigerians in the diaspora.
In late October the country’s federal government approved the extension of the deadline for NIN-SIM data verification to the end of 2021. The new extension, taking the deadline into 2022, is estimated as the eighth to date in a process that began back in 2020. At that time, the deadline was a matter of a few weeks.
