President Muhammadu Buhari ordered yesterday that no subscriber should be blocked from telecom operators’ networks till February 9, 2021.
Subscribers, who hadn’t link their NIN to sim cards, would have had their lines blocked on January 19, being the initial deadline for them to link their SIMs to their National Identity Number, NIN.
NIMC took to their social media handle to advise legal Nigerians to register for their NIN and link it with their sim cards before February 19th.
Earlier in Dec 2020, the Federal Government declared that after December 30, 2020, all SIMs that were not registered with valid NINs on the network of telecommunications companies would be blocked. It later extended the deadline following widespread opposition against the earlier announcement and gave three weeks’ extension for subscribers with NIN from December 30, 2020, to January 19, 2021.
It also gave six weeks’ extension for subscribers without NIN from December 30, 2020, to February 9, 2021. However, before the January deadline, many telephone users and organizations called for a further deadline extension or outright suspension of the NIN registration process due to the large number of people that are yet to get their NINs.
At the expiration of the January 19 deadline, Nigerians went into panic mode, following the consistent statements by the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Dr. Ibrahim Pantami that those who didn’t meet the deadline will be blocked.
Some Nigerians still believe that the new deadline been February 9 may still be extended considering the fact that a large proportion of the populace are yet to enroll for NIMC, not because they don’t want to but because the crowd in each allocated centers are unbearable.
You can use this link in the article here to link your NIN to your various sim cards. Let us know in the comment if you have gotten your NIN.