Based on a news report, the Director General of the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), Engr. Aliyu Aziz, indicated that the commission has currently captured 89 million unique NINs, with plans to capture more people, particularly in the remote areas of the country where partnerships with traditional institutions are required to reach the grassroots population. Beyond this, the commission is in the process of upgrading its database as the existing capacity is reaching its limit, currently at 89% utilization rate.

We recall that on 15 December 2020, the NCC mandated all mobile subscribers to submit their National Identification Number (NIN) to update their SIM card registration, putting 30 December 2020 as the initial deadline. Given the risk of disconnection of many subscribers, as many Nigerians had not enrolled by the initial deadline, the regulator extended the deadline on several occasions from January 2021 to February, June, July, October, December 2021 and finally, March 2022.

With the hope of ramping up the integration exercise, the telecoms regulator, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) on April 4, 2022, ordered the barring of outgoing calls for telephone lines that had not complied the NIN-SIM linkage. Meanwhile, as of December 2021, NIMC had issued c.66 million unique NINs, and in April, 78 million NINs had been issued.